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CORBELL PICKETT 
ge E. Pickett) 



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ACROSS MY PATH 



Across My Path 

Memories of People I Have Known 



BY 

LaSALLE CORBELL PICKETT 

(Mrs. General George E. Pickett) 



New York 

BRENTANO'S 

1916 



A 



Copyright, 1916, by 
BRENTANO'S 



M* 23 1916 
0<L 



i, 



>GI.A427906 



Affectionately Dedicated to 

MARGARET WOODROW WILSON 

In recognition of her devotion in carrying into 
dark places the torch of love and sympathy 
lighted in the long ago by the divine fire of hu- 
manity. The song which she has laid upon the 
altar of service awakens in sorrowing hearts 
responsive notes that in the ages to come will 
echo in sweetest tones through many lives. 
In memory of her sainted Mother, whose name 
is ever revered by grateful hearts, she devoted 
the proceeds of a concert to the Washington 
institution for the blind. A young girl inmate, 
touching the gifts that had come through song, 
said, "As my fingers have caressed this furni- 
ture I have heard the notes of 'Ave Maria' all 
through it. I do not want Miss Wilson de- 
scribed to me; I have seen her with my soul." 
As a school-girl at the Woman's College in Bal- 
timore, where I first met her, she even then 

v 



DEDICATION 



gave promise of the depth and earnestness with 
which she would grasp the deeper problems. 
Thus in the dawn of life she consecrated herself 
to the service of humanity, a soul aspiring to 
the highest ideals, and to-day fulfilling the 
pledge so early given to good causes, as is well 
attested by grateful hearts. 

La Salle Corbell Pickett. 



VI 



Contents 



PAGE* 

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe 1 

Mrs. Jefferson Davis 7 

Helena Modjeska 15 

Charlotte Cushman 21 

Adelaide Neilson 27 

Adelaide Ristori 32 

Mary Ashton Livermore . . . . . . .39 

Laura Keene 45 

Jean Davenport Lander 50 

Fannie Janauschek 55 

Fanny Kemble. . 61 

Anna Cora Mowatt 68 

Ellen Tree 73 

Kate Field 79 

Lucy Larcom 84 

Clara Barton . . . 89 

Mrs. Robert Edward Lee 94 

Louise Chandler Moulton 100 

Louisa May Alcott 105 

Celia Thaxter Ill 

vii 



CONTENTS 






PAGE 


Mrs. Clement C. Clay 


. . 116 


Margaret E. Sangster 


. 124 


Emily Virginia Mason ..... 


. . 130 


Mrs. Roger A. Pryor 


. 137 


Sarah Orne Jewett 


. . 143 



Vlll 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PACING 
PAGE 

Adelaide Neilson 27 

Adelaide Ristori . 32*^ 

Laura Keene 45 * 

Madame Janauschek 55 s "' 

Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie 68 K^ 

Kate Field . 79 ^ 

Lucy Larcom . . . 84 v 

Clara Barton 89 ^ 

Louise Chandler Moulton. . . . . . 100 ^ 

Mrs. Clement C. Clay. 116 )/ 

Margaret E. Sangster 124 ^ 



lx 



MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE 

IT sometimes happens that the repu- 
tation of a writer falls a slave to the 
one work that sprang in glowing 
spontaneity from the soul and struck 
upon the white heat of a Nation's cru- 
cial moment, sending an electric current 
thrilling through the heart of the world. 
So it happened to Julia Ward Howe, 
and to the great body of readers that 
name signifies the Battle Hymn of the 
Republic, though it was but the out- 
glow of a momentary fire and her long, 
brave, laborious life was given by seri- 
ous effort to the many great subjects 
which demanded the exercise of all the 
strength of her powerful mind. 

"I should not think that you would 
like the Battle- Hymn," she said when 
I spoke of it with praise. 

"Why not? Do not you like i Mary- 
land, my Maryland'?" 

1 



MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE 

"No; I do not. The poetry flats in 
places and the expression is not equal 
to the thought. And neither is the 
Battle Hymn an adequate expression of 
the feeling that gave it birth. I think 
written things never are. They fall 
short of the emotion which they strive 
to speak. " 

"I think the two poems must have 
been written under much the same kind 
of impulse, " I said. 

"Maybe they were. But I sometimes 
wonder if the Battle Hymn would have 
sprung into being had it not been for 
the impetus received from the casual 
suggestion of someone else." 

"I fancied that it leaped out with no 
warning, as the flame towers up from 
the heart of a volcano." 

"I felt so when it finally came to me. 
I was in Washington and, with some 
friends, among them my pastor, Dr. 
James Freeman Clarke, drove to a camp 

2 



MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE 

near the city limits. As we returned 
some of our party sang a strain of the 
war-song, John Brown, and were 
cheered by soldiers along the way. Dr. 
Clarke turned to me with the query, 
'Why do not you write some good 
words to that stirring air?' The 
thought had never occurred to me and 
it did not seem possible that I ever 
could write anything of that kind. I 
said, 'I wish I could/ with a feeling of 
dismissing the whole subject with the 
wish. I was tired that night and did 
not think about the Doctor's sugges- 
tion. I heard the tramp, tramp of sol- 
diers' feet under my window at the 
Willard Hotel and soon fell asleep from 
fatigue. The next morning I awoke 
with the idea seething in my heart and 
bringing its expression with it. As the 
lines surged through me I knew that I 
must put them into form or they would 
drift away and never come again. I 

3 



MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE 

got up and jotted them on paper and 
went back to bed and fell peacefully 
asleep." 

"You must have had triumphant 
dreams in that sleep." 

"No, I had no feeling but that of hav- 
ing relieved my heart of a fiery burden. 
It was later that the meaning of it be- 
gan to dawn upon me, when I heard 
that Chaplain McCabe and his fellow- 
prisoners had sung it in Libby when the 
news of Gettysburg was brought to 
them, and that after his release he had 
sung it in Washington before a large 
audience who had come to hear him tell 
the story of prison life, and the people 
sprang to their feet and wept and 
shouted and President Lincoln with 
tears flowing down his face called out, 
' Sing it again!!' Then I realized that 
it is not the thing we write that carries 
weight, but that which writes itself 
through us." 

4 



MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE 

" Great things would not select you 
to write themselves through if you had 
not been a student of lofty subjects and 
kept yourself in readiness to receive and 
give forth." 

"But I had my frivolous time and 
enjoyed it as much as other girls enjoy 
theirs. I was so devoted to social 
pleasures that somebody said that if I 
were on a desert island with one old 
' nigger' I would give a party. I shud- 
der to think what would have been my 
mental state had not Doctor Howe res- 
cued me as he rescued Laura Bridgman 
from blindness and deafness and put 
me back into the road on which I had 
been started by my early trainers when 
I used to make the maid tie me in a 
chair so that I could not leave my books 
and go out to play." 

On being asked to give a motto for 
women Mrs. Howe replied "Up to 
Date." In her own career she illus- 

5 



MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE 

fcrated the value of this motto, for she 
was never known to be out of touch 
with the interests of the moment and 
her help in every useful development 
was given with all the enthusiasm of 
her vigorous nature. She treasured 
the lessons of the past but never for a 
moment of her long life did she live in 
the past. Her pen and voice were al- 
ways ready and efficient in promotion 
of the good cause and time did not 
leave her on the barren sands. The 
work she did in her last year was filled 
with the old strength applied to the 
new things of advancing thought. 



6 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

AT a reception in Richmond I 
stood beside Mrs. Davis as thou- 
sands of old soldiers passed by, 
stopping to give us the hand-clasp of af- 
fection and to look into our faces with 
eyes that held loving memories of past 
days and of those for whose sake we 
were dear to the veterans of the South. 
After they were gone she turned to me 
and said: 

"Is not love the most wonderful 
thing in life? We should be the two 
proudest women on earth to have had 
the love of two such men as your hus- 
band and mine, who could inspire the 
hearts of so many, from the laborer 
with his rough toil-worn hand to the 
great professional man with soft white 
hand and strong brain, with such af- 
fection for us as is shown in the warm 
clasp and the loving eyes." 

7 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

"And here we are, both forced to live 
apart from them, I in Washington be- 
cause I must earn a living, and you still 
farther away." 

"It seems strange to some that I live 
so far away from my old home and my 
southern friends, but it is not for lack 
of love. God ruled for the best in 
sending me to the North and Maggie 
to her western home. When she and 
her Confederate soldier husband went 
to Colorado they were not warmly re- 
ceived. The only thought in the com- 
munity was that they had been of those 
who fought against the government. 
But she won them to friendliness and 
confidence and has built a monument 
to her father in the hearts of the peo- 
ple." 

It has been so short a time since Mrs. 
Davis was taken from us we scarcely 
realize that her memory extended back 
to the days of men who passed from 

8 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

earth before the beginning of the war 
for which they had paved the way. 

" About the time that Mr. Davis was 
elected to Congress/ ' she said, " Mr. Cal- 
houn came to Yicksburg and my hus- 
band was asked to welcome him in a 
speech. We became good friends and 
he deepened my always lively interest 
in politics. Our friendship involved 
me in difficulties, for I entered into a 
correspondence with him, and if you 
had ever tried to thread your way 
through the bewilderments of his com- 
plicated system of penmanship you 
would have some idea of my laborious 
efforts. After struggling in vain with 
a particularly involved epistle I re- 
turned it for explanation and he said, 
'I know what I think on this subject 
but cannot decipher what I wrote/ 
I still clung to his friendship and 
was repaid for my constancy by the 
clearness of his expression when he 

9 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

was talking instead of writing. I quite 
agreed with Mr, Webster in the view 
that one of his greatest powers was in 
his conversation, but heaven help the 
unwary wanderer caught in the pitfalls 
of his writing/' 

"You escaped those dangers when 
you went to Washington where he could 
convey his thought to you without the 
medium of a pen." 

"Think of the perils of traveling to 
the Capital in those days. We had no 
palace cars with velvet cushions and 
lofty porter to flourish a whisk broom 
in the air and demand a fee. We had 
to make a three-week journey in a car- 
riage over rocks and mud-puddles and 
brambly ways. Falling down an em- 
bankment was a cheerful incident of 
our trip and our arrival at the Na- 
tional Hotel was surely an illustra- 
tion of the ' survival of the fittest/ 
Mr. Davis took his seat in December, 

10 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

1845, and — well, life was fairly inter- 
esting afterward, but that was a dear 
old home in Vicksburg." 

"You have seen more of the world 
and its progress than you could have 
in quiet old Vicksburg. " 

"I saw the first telegram; one of my 
friends said she knew it was a trick, 
but put in two bits to get the news that 
it was a fine day. Somebody wrote me 
of a machine that sewed. I suppose 
some of the things that we regard as 
impossible will become as necessary to 
everyday life as the telegraph and sew- 
ing machine are now." 

"It is interesting to watch things in 
the making." 

"In New T York, when we had gone 
north in the hope that the change might 
restore health to Mr. Davis, I saw the 
first cable message, 6 Peace on earth, 
good will to men/ from the Queen of 
England, and again people thought it 

11 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

was a joke played upon visionaries. 
At a picnic on the coast of Maine I 
found how widespread was my hus- 
band's fame as an orator. A servant 
upset a plate of cake over me and in 
apology confessed that he was only a 
student who had been told that Mr. 
Davis was to make a speech after tea 
and had asked the privilege of serving 
so that he might hear him. I forgave 
him and found a place for him where 
he could hear the speech without dam- 
age to the rest of us." 

For a time the Davis family lived in 
the old Brockenbrough House near 
Richmond. 

"It was a grand old place," Mrs. 
Davis said, "with beautiful terraced 
garden. Old Virginia gentlemen said, 
' This house w r as perfect when lovely 
Mary Brockenbrough used to walk sing- 
ing among her flowers/ We fell into 
the habit of referring everything to 

12 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

lovely Mary and consulting as to how 
she would like each change made. Not 
even here was peace; there was con- 
stant warfare between the 'hill cats/ on 
our knoll, and the ' butcher cats/ or low- 
land boys. The peaceful efforts of Mr. 
Davis were respectfully but firmly set 
aside. ' President/ said the leader of 
the " butcher cats/' 'we like you and we 
don't want to hurt any of your boys, 
but we ain't never goin' to be friends 
with them "hill cats.'"" 

The wit and intellect of Mrs. Davis 
made her a social leader in Washington 
for a decade or more before she was 
carried into the whirlpool of war. Her 
culture and ability brought into the 
Executive Mansion of the Confederacy 
a bright and congenial circle in which 
the weary President found diversion 
for an hour or two each evening before 
taking up the work which lasted far 
into the morning. He owed his life to 

13 



MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

her devotion when he was a prisoner in 
Fort Monroe. In after years she gave 
him constant aid as an amanuensis and 
brightened his life by her unfailing love. 



14 



HELENA MODJESKA 

WE are indebted to the tyrants 
of the world for many gifted 
and charming people who 
have been forced upon our shores to 
seek the opportunities denied them in 
their own countries. To the Russian 
Government we owe the privilege of 
counting among our brilliant Shak- 
spearian women the beautiful Polish 
actress, Helena Modjeska. She was 
called Helena because of her small 
Greek head which suggested the name 
famous in Grecian history and tradi- 
tion, and Modjeska, a modified form of 
the name of the old man to whom her 
mother had married her in her very 
early youth. Through his appreciation 
of her talent she was greatly assisted in 
her stage career, which she had been 
permitted to enter after the death of 
her father, Michael Opido, and the loss 

15 



HELENA MODJESKA 



of the property on which the family in- 
come depended. Like most Polish wom- 
en, Modjeska was enthusiastically pa- 
triotic, and so great was her popularity 
that the government feared her power, 
prohibiting her portrait to be shown in 
Warsaw, forbidding the students to at- 
tend her performances in a body, and 
shutting up the Polish theater in St. 
Petersburg just before her opening 
night. 

"Such a little thing as I am," she 
said, drawing up her form to its not 
very great height, "for a big nation to 
be afraid of. Did you ever hear of 
such an absurdity?" 

"The fatality of a charge of dyna- 
mite does not always depend upon the 
size of the package," I replied. 

"The funniest thing that ever hap- 
pened to me was in Ireland," she said, 
laughing. "I love the Irish, both for 
their characteristics and because they 

16 



HELENA MODJESKA 



are, like my own people, oppressed ; then 
again, they are fond of me. In Dublin 
I talked to them in the theater and they 
greeted me with applause and cheers. 
An English officer heard the noise and 
came in, thinking that I was saying 
something of a political nature. For- 
tunately I knew him and was not 
frightened when he came to me and told 
me that it was late and he had come to 
escort me home. I bade farewell to my 
friends and left the theater with my 
self -constituted protector, marveling by 
the way over the uneasiness of the head 
that wears the crown of despotism and 
wondering that anyone would ever con- 
sent to such discomfort." 

Modjeska made her American debut 
as Adrienne Lecouvreur. From her 
success in that play and in Camille it 
was sometimes thought that she was 
essentially an emotional actress. 

"I do not love those plays," she said. 
17 



HELENA MODJESKA 



"From the time I first saw Hamlet, 
Shakspeare has been my stage god." 

"I have seen you play Rosalind and 
I should never know that you were the 
same person who breaks our hearts in 
those emotional plays. I think you like 
Rosalind." 

"Yes, I do. I like to watch Orlando 
pretending to believe that he does not 
know who Ganymede is." 

"Do you think he does know?" 

"There is no doubt of it. Oliver had 
not succeeded in destroying Orlando's 
native wit, if he had refused to give 
him the training beseeming his station. 
He would know by intuition that the 
eyes that looked so earnestly into his 
were Rosalind's eyes. And if she were 
only the boy she pretended to be why 
should she have asked Orlando to fancy 
her to be Rosalind when she found that 
he was the love-lorn youth who had left 
his messages on every tree that offered 

18 



HELENA MODJESKA 



a page for the writing? If lie did not 
know why did he accept the novel 
proposition? And then does not a 
lover know when he is in the presence 
of the beloved -one ?" 

"Did not you once cheat the Count 
in that way?" 

"Oh, the old peasant woman; wasn't 
she a joke? — clamoring for payment 
for her stolen pig, and that dear de- 
luded man begging his host to pay the 
dreadful creature and get her away be- 
fore Helena came, because she would 
keep them pig-buying all the afternoon, 
and never guessing that it was his wor- 
risome Helena making all that bother. 
I arranged my disguise more care- 
fully than Rosalind did hers, and then 
my Count had been bewildered by sev- 
eral years of trying to take care of me 
and his perceptions were blunted by 
hard usage." 

Had Modjeska been less gifted as an 
19 



HELENA MODJESKA 



actress she could have devoted her life 
with equal success to any one of several 
other occupations. She wrote brilliant 
verse, painted pictures that would have 
made her famous but for her other 
great gift, amused herself by writing a 
charming fairy story and illuminating 
it by her own art, was an accomplished 
musician and composer, and wrote 
equally well in Polish and English. 
After the death of her guardian-hus- 
band she became Countess Pozenta 
Chlapowski, and she and the fascinating 
and scholarly Count made a beautiful 
home in California, which formed the 
nucleus of a Polish community on the 
founding and upbuilding of which the 
fortunes of the two were expended. 
There she died a few years ago and her 
own land, which could not give her a 
home, was permitted to open for her a 
grave. 



20 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 

I LOVE Boston and I know that you 
do." 

"Yes, that was my home and 
there I made my first appearance on the 
stage. Shall I tell you the thing that 
pleased me most of all that ever hap- 
pened to me % It is that the old house 
on Richmond Street where I was born 
is a school now and is named Cushman 
School. It is the first school in Boston 
to be named after a woman, and I think 
that is the greatest honor I could have. 
I was not in a reading part at first; I 
started out with the impression that I 
had a singing voice. People said that 
I had and when I tried it they listened 
as if they liked it. But it gave out 
down in New Orleans and I went to the 
manager of a theater and asked him for 
a place in his company. He had lost his 
Lady Macbeth and offered me the part 

21 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 



if I could do it. The thought of play- 
ing Lady Macbeth filled me with such 
delight that I dared not tell him that I 
had no costumes for the character lest 
I should be prevented from taking it. 
I postponed the melancholy avowal un- 
til the day before the performance. 
He sent me to the leading lady of the 
French Theatre who was much amused 
by the idea of draping my lanky five 
and a half foot figure in robes designed 
for her stout four foot ten inch form, 
but she was good-natured and cut down 
and pieced out and otherwise mal- 
treated her gowns until I was fitted 
out for Lady Macbeth, which unfortu- 
nate heroine I became when I was nine- 
teen/ ' 

"Was Lady Macbeth the character 
you liked best to play?" 

"No; I preferred Eomeo to all 
others. He has such a varied career and 
so many different emotions, and each 

22 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 



one is so tensely f elt, that nearly all the 
facets of emotional life are presented. 
Then it gave me a chance to fight a real 
duel, which is always a triumph for a 
woman. On one occasion I experi- 
enced an emotion not set down in the 
book. I was playing Romeo to Miss 
Anderton's Juliet when just as I was 
revealing the rapture of my love a man 
in the audience gave vent to a sneeze 
so loud and grotesque that I knew he 
had manufactured it for that occasion. 
I quit making love and led my lady off 
the stage with, I hope, a fair degree of 
the gallantry of the Montagues. I re- 
turned and announced that if some man 
did not put that person out I would 
have to do it. It was done and I got 
more cheers for that irregular inter- 
polation than for any of the scenes 
written for the original Romeo. I es- 
corted my Juliet back to the stage and 
the play went on." 

23 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 



I noticed a black enameled ring that 
she always wore and she took it off and 
showed me the inscription on it, "Kind 
words. McVicker's Theatre, January 
11, 1873. " 

"I care more for it than I could for 
a whole mine of jewels. Every word 
in it is a diamond of greater value than 
the Koh-i-noor and every line of trac- 
ery is a golden tendril of love. The 
dear people! — to think of the little I 
could do for them and to feel how I 
longed to be a real help and comfort to 
them! Their love was a lavish reward 
for the little word here and there which 
I could not have kept back if I had 
tried.' ' 

I knew that all the love that the 
mimic world could give would be slight 
recognition of what she had done for 
all who came near her. She was the 
good angel of the stage and no effort 
was too great for her if it brought com- 

24 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 



fort or help to someone else. While we 
were fellow guests in a delightful Rich- 
mond home I learned that her nobility 
of character, the womanly dignity of 
her manner and the love in her heart 
charmed all who knew her. 

Macready said that when playing 
Macbeth to her Lady Macbeth he felt 
himself to be "less than of secondary 
importance — in fact, a mere thing of 
naught/' The queen of the tragic 
stage, her own life was a tragedy, a long, 
agonizing battle with the disease that 
took her away all too soon from a 
world that can ill spare such as she. 
She died in her native city among the 
people who, as she said in her farewell 
to the stage, "from the beginning to the 
end of my career, from my first appear- 
ance on the stage to my last appear- 
ance, have been truly ' brothers, friends 
and countrymen.' " The plain granite 
shaft which marks her grave in Mount 

25 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 



Auburn bears no inscription except the 
name which stands for all that is bril- 
liant in art, all that is noble and good in 
humanity, " Charlotte Cushman." 



26 



ADELAIDE NEILSON 

ELIZABETH ANN BROWNE, 
mill-girl, nursery-maid, barmaid, 
seamstress, nameless member of 
a corps de ballet, doing Shakspeare 
in her leisure moments, and giving 
dramatic performances with her dolls 
for audience, could scarcely have looked 
forward to the time when she would 
be Adelaide Neilson, the one Juliet on 
the English-speaking stage, a radiant, 
Ariel-like spirit, the embodiment of 
spring, of dawn, of moonlight, of love 
and hope and dreams, the vision of the 
poet when he evolved that witching 
image of eternal youth. I marveled 
over her wondrous personation of that 
spirit of love and morning and sun- 
shine, and once asked her: 

"How did you learn to play Juliet 
so well?" 

- "Oh, one does not learn to play 
27 



ADELAIDE NEILSON 



Juliet. Either one is Juliet or is not; 
that is all. The reason that Americans 
have no Juliet is that they think she 
must be learned and they do not create 
an atmosphere in which she can be 
born. The consequence is that an 
actress spends years in trying to learn 
Juliet and then when she essays the 
part finds that she is long past the time 
when there is a possibility of ever being 
Juliet. If there was such a period in her 
life it was away back when life was 
young ; when the sun had just risen on 
the new day; when the rose was in the 
bud and the dew lay sparkling on the 
folded petal ; when life was palpitant 
with youth and the first dawnings of 
love's vision; when all is emotion and 
intuition and the cold and stony 
prompter, Reason, has not appeared 
with the whisper, 'But Juliet would not 
have said it in that way ; she would have 
used a falling inflection here and an 

28 



ADELAIDE NEILSON 



emphasis there and an upward glance 
somewhere else/ When Reason takes 
hold of Juliet she dies more promptly 
than Romeo's dagger could have' done 
away with her. There is a time in the 
life of every woman when she knows 
what Juliet would have done, and if she 
does not do it then — ah, it is too late!" 

"I am glad that you selected the right 
moment and did not wait for time and 
reason." 

"Oh, but I did not select. No one 
ever selects in regard to Juliet. A man 
may select an appropriate opportunity 
for doing Shylock, or reason as to the 
proper way of reading Hamlet's solilo- 
quy; a woman may study phrasing for 
the purpose of demonstrating the cruel 
ambition and subsequent remorse of 
Lady Macbeth, or compare different 
methods of representing the madness 
of Ophelia, but Juliet is an inspiration 
of the dawn, and is not due to any abil- 

29 



ADELAIDE NEILSON 



ity on the part of the one to whom the 
luminance comes.' ' 

At the age of thirty-two the final cur- 
tain fell upon the drama of Adelaide 
Neilson's life and I have often thought 
of her words when I have seen elderly 
ladies frisking in springtime dalliance 
about their nurses and vowing undying 
affection to stout Romeos who are ap- 
parently on the verge of retirement for 
the blunder of obesity. 

Neilson's voice, inherited from her 
Spanish actor-father, was filled with 
the music of song-birds and of soft 
winds at dawn, the joy of flowers open- 
ing in the sun and the sadness of long 
sea-waves breaking on the gray rocks on 
a day in dark November. That voice 
could touch the heart with joy and 
with sorrow, with radiant love or with 
fiery indignation. It was a melodious 
harp with strings that vibrated to every 
emotion. 

30 



ADELAIDE NEILSON 



Adelaide Neilson has passed from 
our sight but not from the stage world. 
She lingers there as the perennial Ju- 
liet. The traditions of that mimic 
realm are irradiated by her luminous 
eyes, her graceful form haunts the twi- 
light of the Thespian gods as the Naiad 
Queen roams in the mystic shadows of 
an enchanted woodland. To those who 
knew her she is a radiant memory; to 
those who have come newly to the king- 
dom wherein she reigned she is a bril- 
liant dream. 



31 



ADELAIDE RISTORI 

I HAVE a cherished bit of lace, and 
sometimes take it out of its box and 
look at it, because it brings back to 
me one of the most glorious women I 
ever knew; glorious not only in her 
magnificent art, but in her lovely, gra- 
cious, deep-hearted womanhood. I like 
to see again in fancy her stately form, 
her wealth of shining, chestnut hair, 
the luminous deep lakes that Italians 
have for eyes. I love to watch once more 
the flashes of lightning glancing across 
them when the passion of her art 
thrilled her. It is a delight to live again 
in the magnetic personality that made 
Ristori the most fascinating figure on 
the stage of her era. She comes back 
to me sometimes when I look at little 
children, for she loved children with a 
great big affectionate heart. 

"Though," she said laughing, "the 
32 



:h ■"'■■■-./ 




ADELAIDE RISTORI 



ADELAIDE RISTORI 



little angels have at times almost 
wrecked my professional career, just 
as I used to do in the beginning of 
my stage life when the fate of some 
poor victim depended upon my histri- 
onic integrity. Children do such unex- 
pected things. I had one in Medea once 
who upset all my tragic effects. One 
of the children had a speaking part 
and as there was only one infant actor 
in our company we gave him the talk 
and borrowed a child from the neighbor- 
hood for the silent one. When the crisis 
arrived I turned my back to the au- 
dience and was supposed to be killing my 
offspring in approved style, when the 
little stranger, being seized with stage 
fright and possibly fearing for his life 
in my deadly hands, jumped up scream- 
ing and ran with all speed across the 
stage and took refuge in a wing. The 
audience had been much impressed by 
the tragic scene, but what human could 

33 



ADELAIDE BISTORI 



view calmly a dead child springing up 
without warning and rushing across the 
stage? A wave of laughter submerged 
that scene. I could not complain, for 
I had hopelessly ruined the first scene 
in which I appeared, at the age of 
three months, in a New- Year's gift bas- 
ket, in which I had been introduced into 
the family with the poultry and fruit 
for the purpose of establishing peace 
between my reckless parents and my 
hard-hearted grandfather who had 
never forgiven them for eloping and be- 
ing married without his consent. In- 
stead of diffusing peace over the situa- 
tion, I immediately declared war by 
shrieking my loudest and completely 
drowning the voices of the more experi- 
enced actors, while the audience went 
into convulsions of laughter. It's a bad 
thing artistically for an audience to 
laugh when the play does not call for 
mirthfulness. Sometimes it puts peo- 

34 



ADELAIDE RISTORI 



pie into a good humor and makes them 
more friendly to a play that needs char- 
ity. But to laugh in Medea — Oh, the 
pity of it!" 

In the horror of the thought Bistori 
looked as tragic as if she were again 
the Colchian Princess putting her be- 
loved children to death. 

The sympathetic heart of the child 
of sunny Italy went out to all in trouble. 
One of her happiest triumphs was in 
saving the life of a poor soldier who 
was under sentence of death for placing 
his hand on the hilt of his sword when 
his superior officer had struck him un- 
justly. At the theater between the acts 
one evening at Madrid she laid aside 
h^ Lt *qe character and appeared in the 
Qu\ «sox in a tragedy greater than 

any of the Shakspearean roles that she 
loved to play. Throwing herself at the 
feet of the Queen she begged for the 
life of the unfortunate man. After a 

35 



ADELAIDE RISTORI 



time so long that the audience became 
impatient she secured an order for 
commuting the sentence, which reached 
the prison just as the priests were ad- 
ministering to the condemned man the 
last service of the Church. 

"But that only saved his life," she 
said. "He was sent to prison under a 
life sentence. Six years later when the 
Prince of the Asturias was born I vis- 
ited the Queen again and implored her 
to pardon the man who had been so se- 
verely punished for so slight an infrac- 
tion of military rules. She graciously 
granted my plea and the man became 
my devoted friend and whenever I 
played in Madrid would sit in the gal- 
lery applauding so wildly as to awaken 
the curiosity of his neighbors. 'She 
saved my life/ he would reply to in- 
quiries as to his enthusiasm. A pleas- 
ing incident of his prison life was an 
apology and plea for pardon from the 

36 



ADELAIDE RISTORI 



officer responsible for the injustice. In 
an illness that threatened to be mortal 
he had repented of his cruelty and 
wished forgiveness/' 

Eistori was past the half -century 
mark when she began the study of Eng- 
lish and she spoke it with an accent 
that may have been a defect in Lady 
Macbeth, but it was delightful, and 
wholly unrepresentable, in the conver- 
sation of the brilliant Italian. 

Born to the stage, Eistori was at 
fourteen taking leading parts and at 
eighteen she played Mary Stuart, though 
upon her first appearance as the un- 
happy Queen of Scots her manager told 
her that she had a marked tendency for 
comedy but "as for tragedy, it is not 
for you, and I advise you to abandon it 
entirely!" She may have reflected 
upon the lack of prophetic soul at times 
manifested by managers, years later 
when she was the queen of tragedy, 

37 



ADELAIDE RISTORI 



with the elder Dumas kissing the hem 
of her mantle and cooking macaroni 
for her, Legouve worshiping before her 
shrine, Jules Janin expressing his opin- 
ion that "she lacks nothing but to be a 
French woman," and the famous Cle- 
singer announcing delightedly, "I will 
break the statue of Tragedy I have 
made, for Ristori has taught me that it 
was but the statue of Melodrama!" 



38 



MARY ASHTON LIVERMORE 

SAID one of her admirers, "The 
only fault that Mrs. Livermore 
has is that knowing her makes 
all other women seem insignificant." 
There was a magnitude in Mrs. Liver- 
more 's nature that caused her to be re- 
garded as above the rest of humanity, 
yet not too far away for any wounded 
or wearied soul to lean upon her and 
find support. She was granite to up- 
hold but tenderly human to sympathize 
and love. 

She wore a gold ring which testified 
to her depth of feeling and the appre- 
ciation that it elicited from those whom 
she served. Some years after the close 
of the war between the States, upon the 
conclusion of a lecture delivered by 
Mrs. Livermore in a community to 
which she was a stranger, a woman came 
to her and asked if she remembered a 

39 



MARY ASHTON LIVERMORE 

letter that she had written to the wife 
and mother of a dying soldier, giving 
his name. Mrs. Livermore had written 
so many letters for soldiers who would 
never again see their dear ones on earth 
that she could not recall this one until 
the woman showed her the old letter, 
worn and patched, but still legible. 
"I recall that letter, " said Mrs. Liver- 
more. "I hope that it brought at least 
a little comfort to you. ' ' " It helped us 
to live through that awful time. It 
has helped others. We sent it to those 
who had suffered like sorrow until it was 
so worn that I had to sew the paper to- 
gether. Then I quit sending it out, and 
made copies for those who might be 
aided by your loving thought and ten- 
der words. The poor young wife kept 
up for a few years and then died of sor- 
row. On her deathbed she told me to 
take her wedding ring which she should 
wear until her death, and give it to you 

40 



MARY ASHTON LIVERMORE 

as a token of remembrance of your 
goodness to our soldiers. So, when I 
found you were coming I made up my 
mind that I would hear you and give 
you the ring," handing her a circlet of 
gold, which Mrs. Livermore accepted 
tearfully and lovingly. 

"You have had an eventful life," I 
said to her. ' ' Please tell me some of the 
thrilling and soulful things you have 
known." 

"I think," she said, "the time of 
greatest excitement I have ever known 
was in the Wigwam in Chicago when 
Abraham Lincoln was first nominated 
for the presidency. To me the most re- 
markable feature of the occasion was 
my being there, so close to the center of 
action. There were women in the gal- 
leries stretched away in so large a cir- 
cle that they could not hear anything 
that went on except the shouting when 
it was all over. Greatly to my surprise 

41 



MARY ASHTON LIVERMORE 

I was sent by my paper to report the 
Convention. It was the first time a 
woman had ever been appointed to re- 
port a meeting of that kind. So un- 
heard of a thing could not pass unques- 
tioned and the Marshal of the day came 
to me and told me that I must go into 
the gallery, as women were not allowed 
on the floor. My husband, who was re- 
porting for his own paper, tried to ex- 
plain my position but was not permitted 
to do so. The other reporters came to 
my defence and told me to sit still and 
recommended the Marshal to * dry up/ as 
they expressed it. So I stayed in the 
heart of the battle and witnessed every 
scene and heard every word. The Wig- 
wam was packed. An immense crowd 
was gathered around the building, and 
sentinels posted upon the roof to give 
the signal to the throngs below when 
the decisive moment should come. It 
came. It seemed to me that the mighty 

42 



MARY ASHTON LIVERMORE 

shout arising from that great throng 
went around the world and came back 
with renewed strength and resonance. 
Thus I saw Mr. Lincoln on his most 
triumphant day, and yet not in tri- 
umph, for his face showed a sadness 
such as I had never seen on any other, 
and the pain and weariness of it im- 
pressed me more and more every time 
I saw him afterward. I recall his say- 
ing, at a time when the darkness was 
heaviest around him, 'Oh, if there is a 
man out of hell that suffers more than 
I do I pity him!' " 

Mrs. Livermore was a leading worker 
in the Sanitary Commission Fair to 
which President Lincoln sent the orig- 
inal manuscript of the Emancipation 
Proclamation, thereby winning the 
prize offered by a gentleman of Chicago 
for the largest single contribution, a 
gold watch, which the President wore 
with great satisfaction. He had prom- 

43 



MARY ASHTON LIVERMORE 

ised Mrs. Livermore that lie would be 
present at a fair to be given in May, 
1865, but before the time arrived his 
premonition that he would not live long 
after the close of the war had been 
tragically realized. 

In passing from earth Mary Ashton 
Livermore left a memory that is a rock 
of strength and a garden of blossom 
and fragrance to the many who knew 
her as a friend and the many more who 
from afar felt the influence of her good 
deeds and noble character. 



44 




-a^ 



.y^^^z^C-^ 



LAURA KEENE 

A COMEDY character of the high- 
est type, it was the unhappy fate 
of Laura Keene to have a part in 
the most terrible tragedy that has ever 
plunged our Nation into darkness. 
Though she lived nine years afterward 
and played with her old fire, she never 
recovered from the shock of that night. 
The blood that saturated her stage cos- 
tume as she held the wounded head of 
President Lincoln was a crimson river 
that flowed through the rest of her life. 
Stuart Eobson said of her: "I con- 
sider Laura Keene to have been in many 
respects the most able woman connected 
with the stage of her time. Her best 
impersonation was perhaps Peg Wof£- 
ington in ' Masks and Faces/ " To 
have learned the long list of plays in 
which she appeared would be no light 
task for anyone, and when we reflect 

45 



LAURA KEENB 



upon lier wide range of characters, 
from Shakespeare to the newest light 
comedies, and upon the fact that she 
was also one of the best theater man- 
agers of her day and a brilliant writer 
on art subjects, we can but wonder over 
the varied abilities which she displayed. 
"Oh, but one must know how to man- 
age many things if one is to put a play 
through successfully. Think of that 
night that we were to open in 'Much 
Ado about Nothing ' and the men's 
clothes were not ready! If I had not 
been something of a manager what 
could I have done but collapse? I 
didn't, though; I just called all those 
people around and set them to work 
upon the costumes and then finished off 
with paint and put those men far 
enough apart not to rub each other off 
and then went away to don my Beatrice 
robe and nobody in that audience ever 
knew that those fancy clothes were not 

46 



LAURA KBENE 



straight from the costumers, construct- 
ed after the most approved style." 

"That was a triumph, certainly, " I 
admitted. "And people say that you 
have the most beautiful theater in the 
world. " 

"I do try to make it a home. Why 
not? When we poor players have to 
spend all our waking hours in a theater 
we do not want it to be like a barn. We 
want graceful draperies and vines and 
flowers and soft lights and all those 
things that come sweetly to the mind at 
the thought of home. Does it occur to 
you sometimes that the inadequacy of 
some actors who really have talent is 
due to the rough and bare surround- 
ings in which they spend their lives? 
They have the feeling of homelessness 
and so are never quite at home in their 
parts." 

Laura Keene had the good fortune to 
live in a time when actors presented a 

47 



LAURA KEBNE 



play instead of a wardrobe. It mat- 
tered more that they should surround 
a character with a new fresh atmos- 
phere than that they should surround 
themselves with gorgeous new suits of 
clothes fresh from the shop of the lead- 
ing tailor. Players then were real live 
human beings with thought and feeling 
lurking somewhere in their intellec- 
tual and emotional systems. 

"You really do feel what you speak 
and act," I once said after hearing her 
in an emotional part. 

"Otherwise I could not speak and 
act," she replied. "Oh, I can be prac- 
tical enough to wait in the wings until 
I am sure of my money, but before the 
footlights I forget all about Laura 
Keene with a whole world of sordid 
necessities in everyday life, and really 
fancy myself ' Beatrice ' or ' Rosalind ' 
or 'Peg' with a world of totally differ- 
ent interests." 

48 



LAURA KEENB 



Had Laura Keene been less versatile 
she might have fared better and, per- 
haps, lived a longer life. Leaving the 
stage for a time she gave herself up to 
the Fine Arts periodical which she 
founded and edited. It was intended for 
readers who were interested in the high 
phases of art, dramatic and otherwise, 
and only the art thinkers gave it sup- 
port. It soon vanished, and with it 
much of Laura Keene 's money. She 
had lived up and burned out her life in 
a shorter time than it takes most people 
to reach that end and she passed from 
earth when she should have been in the 
prime of her genius. 



49 



JEAN DAVENPORT LANDER 

WHEN Mrs. Lander was play- 
ing an engagement in Rich- 
mond Mrs. Allan gave a tea, 
inviting her guests to meet the actress, 
who was a social favorite as well as a 
theatrical star. I chanced to be sitting 
by Mrs. Lander when tea was served on 
little tables placed before us to hold 
the delicious viands which our hostess 
had prepared for us. 

"How very delightful this is," said 
Mrs. Lander. "It gives me a beauti- 
ful chance to talk to you, and we can 
say friendly and intimate things under 
the inspiration of the tea-cups. What 
pretty little biscuits! I have heard of 
Maryland biscuit; are these the same?" 

"I have never eaten Maryland beaten 
biscuit but they originated in Virginia 
and our neighbor Maryland borrowed 
the recipe." 

50 



JEAN DAVENPORT LANDER 

"Then I shall eat them with a clear 
Virginia conscience and a good appe- 
tite/' replied Mrs. Lander with an air 
of entire satisfaction. 

Opposite us was a window from which 
the swift-seeing eyes of the actress 
were reveling in one of the most beauti- 
ful views in Richmond. 

"How exquisite !" she said softly. 
"And this is Poe's old home." 

"It was for a little while," I replied, 
"when it was quite new and he was on 
the verge of life, with dreams and hopes 
and visions in his soul." 

"There is sunshine and beauty 
enough in that view to permeate a 
man's whole life, wherever it may have 
been spent afterward. How could he 
ever have seen anything but light and 
joy in the world?" 

"I think he had a world of his own," 
I said, "into which he turned his vis- 
ion and found things that no one else 

51 



JEAN DAVENPORT LANDER 

would have discovered in a whole uni- 
verse." 

"And such weird, ghoulish objects he 
saw," mused Mrs. Lander, "and some- 
times such wondrously beautiful things, 
more beautiful than anyone else could 
have found. His pictures were so vivid ; 
if they were views of frightful things 
they were so real that we were terrified 
by the strength of them; if they were 
visions of the golden side of life we 
were dazzled by their brilliance and 
beauty." 

A one-armed veteran at a table near 
came over to speak to us and as he went 
back to his place I saw Mrs. Lander's 
eyes follow him with a sad light in them 
and knew that she was thinking of 
her soldier-husband, General Frederick 
West Lander, who died in the second 
year of the war. After his death she 
and her mother had charge of a hospital 
at Port Royal. The loving remem- 

52 



JEAN DAVENPORT LANDER 

brance which followed her through the 
rest of her life for the work that she did 
in caring for sick and wounded soldiers 
was dearer to her than all the fame she 
won in her art.* 

In 1865 she returned to the stage in 
her own translation of " Mesalliance." 
She was the first to produce in the 
United States Browning's "Colombe," 
Keade's "Peg Woffington," Haw- 
thorne 's ' ' Scarlet Letter. ' ' In the great 
characters of "Adrienne Lecouvreur," 
"Marie Stuart," "Medea" and "Queen 
Elizabeth" she rivaled Eistori. In her 
childhood Jean Davenport was called 
"the little Dramatic Prodigy" and it 
was said that she suggested to Dickens 
the character of the "Infant Phenom- 
enon." 

Though English by birth, leaving a 
successful European career when she 
first came to America in her girlhood, 
she became to all intents an American 

53 



JEAN DAVENPORT LANDER 

and when, after many brilliant years 
on the stage, she made her farewell ap- 
pearance in the Boston Theater in the 
" Scarlet Letter/' she found a home in 
Washington, where she spent the re- 
mainder of her life surrounded by many 
friends who remembered with admira- 
tion her strong and intellectual inter- 
pretation of " Rosalind" and her state- 
ly and classic presentation of "Lady 
Macbeth," and were won to a deep and 
personal love by the noble qualities of 
her character. 



54 




MADAME JANAUSCHEK 



FANNIE JANAUSCHEK 

THREE stars blazed with dazzling 
brilliance in the theatrical sky of 
the middle Nineteenth Century; 
Rachel, whose early death robbed the 
French stage of its greatest tragedienne 
while yet at the height of her career; 
Ristori, who belonged to the world and 
loved it and reveled in it through 
eighty-four sparkling years; and Ja- 
nauschek, the most stately figure of all, 
whose life went out in the darkness of 
defeat and loss. One of her auditors 
well expressed the effect of her work 
by saying, "I shall always look back on 
some of the occasions on which I have 
seen her as among those which afforded 
me fullest gleams of the possible great- 
ness of the stage." The Muse of Trag- 
edy who had inspired the soul of Shak- 
speare to the highest expression of the 
grandest ideals of the stage had en- 

55 



FANNIE JANAUSCHBK 



dowed her with equal power in the per- 
sonation of those ideals. 

Unlike most great actresses, Madame 
Janauschek had a husband whose first 
aim in life was to serve her interests 
and she was gifted with a heart to ap- 
preciate his devotion, notwithstanding 
the Herculean qualities of her mind, 
which made her the strongest actress of 
her time. When she was playing in 
Richmond she used to come from her 
room to mine in the Ballard and Ex- 
change Hotel for friendly converse. 

"Mr. Pillot's greatest dread is that 
he may be taken for ' Janauschek 's hus- 
band/ " she said. "He says, 'I am 
more than that ; Madame Janauschek is 
my wife/ Is not it delightful to have 
a husband who is so proud of me that 
he wants all the world to know that I 
am his? He will not even let me use 
my earnings for any of my own ex- 
penses. He gives me everything and 

56 



FANNIE JANAUSCHEK 



puts my money carefully away for my 
use when I may need it. Better than 
all else, his devotion to me smooths 
all the roughness from my path and 
plucks the thorns from my roses/' 

"To have such love and so great fame 
seems almost too much happiness for 
one woman/' I said. 

"Ah, there are discordant notes in 
the chorus of fame," she replied, "but 
there is only harmony in the song of 
love." 

It always surprised me that so loving 
a woman and one so devoted to children 
could be the born Medea or Lady Mac- 
beth. I could never imagine her as kill- 
ing her children or expressing her 
willingness to sacrifice her infant for 
the lure of ambition. I have a poem, 
copied in her own handwriting, "The 
Mother of an Angel," which she gave 
me just after the death of my little boy. 

"Could there be anything more beau- 
57 



FANNIE JANAUSCHEK 



tiful," she said, "than to be the mother 
of an angel % It must be the greatest of 
joys to feel thajk a little soul that be- 
longs to you is in heaven sending down 
to you white roses of loving thoughts 
and coming nearer to you as he grows 
more and more into the higher phase of 
life; loving you more and more as he 
expands into the luminous life which is 
love." 

She waved her hands in that graceful 
way with which she tried to express a 
thought that was too deep and high for 
words — even her words. 

Janauschek was not one of those 
handsome stage women who win ad- 
miration by physical attractions. She 
had no charm of appearance to equal 
the Jewish beauty of Rachel or the ex- 
quisite Italian loveliness of Ristori. 
But in the presence of her wonderful 
expression, her graciousness and her ir- 
resistibly impelling voice one never 

58 



FANNIE JANAUSCHEK 



thought of any lack of other attrac- 
tions. On the stage she was the char- 
acter that she enacted and in the mind 
of the audience was just what that fig- 
ure must be, regardless of any tradi- 
tions as to appearance. 

The great Bohemian had brighter 
promise of a happy and successful ca- 
reer than any of her contemporaries on 
the stage, but the close of her days was 
the most tragic of all. One must weep 
over the early passing of Rachel from 
the scene of her triumphs, but she left 
the stage with its glamour yet veiling 
it in iridescent hues and the dew still 
sparkling on the roses that crowned her 
youthful head. Janauschek lingered 
till all the illusions were shattered and 
her triumphs belonged to the past. 
The lover-husband who had shielded 
her from the sordid cares of existence 
died while she was in her prime of 
work and success. Great genius is rare- 

59 



FANNIE JANAUSCHEK 



ly allied with the faculty for the trivi- 
alities of financial management. At the 
last she had only her magnificent jewels 
to ward off the wolf from the door. She 
died in a sad isolation, unbroken even 
by members of her own profession, 
usually the surest to remember and the 
most generous in kind action. With 
her passing Lady Macbeth left the 
stage, probably forever. 



60 



FANNY KEMBLE 

SHE was christened ' i Frances Anne ' ' 
but it ie not likely that the name 
was ever thought of in connection 
with her after it had been registered. 
She was Fanny Kemble to all the world, 
and the name signified the concentra- 
tion of the genius of a line of histrionic 
ancestry. I met her at the home of 
Mrs. Elias Hook in Boston, where a 
number of guests had met, among them 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mrs. Julia 
Ward Howe, Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods 
and Bishop Phillips Brooks. 

"I like your southern accent/ ' she 
said. 
"And I like your English accent.' ' 
"You could acquire my English ac- 
cent if you tried, but I never could learn 
your southern accent. I lived for over 
a year in Georgia on a rice plantation, 
and while I learned of the suffering be- 

61 



FANNY KEMBLE 



cause of slavery, I knew, too, that suf- 
ficient justice was not done to the kind 
master upon whom slavery had been 
thrust. Harriet Martineau and I used 
to have some bitter differences on that 
subject." 

"Do you know Harriet Beecher 
Stowe, 'the little woman who made the 
war/ as Mr. Lincoln said?" 

"Ah, yes: the first time I ever met 
her was at a grand reception given me 
in Arlington Street. She came in from 
the train, dressed in a plain, coarse, 
black gown, but one seeing her sweet 
classic face, hair parted in the center 
and waving and ending in loose curls 
about her neck, forgot her gown." 

"I knew and heard Charlotte Cush- 
man and she told me about you, but I 
never hoped to meet you. I wish I 
could have seen you play." 

"You saw in Charlotte Cushman the 
greatest tragic actress of the world. 

62 



FANNY KEMBLE 



She made her debut here and is, I be- 
lieve, the only Boston woman who 
has ever attained international success 
on the stage. . When I first came to 
Boston in 1832 under the manage- 
ment of Mr. Thomas Barry I met your 
John Howard Payne. At that time 
he had just returned after a twenty 
years' absence and was given a bene- 
fit a few days before my appear- 
ance.' ' 

"Your art gives you an opportunity 
of meeting all the charming people as 
well as of having such beautiful ex- 
periences." 

"When I told Mr. Washington Irv- 
ing that I did not like the stage be- 
cause it gave me no time for congenial 
and improving work he said that I was 
seeing the world and by and by I could 
retire and give myself to a happier ca- 
reer but, great as Mr. Irving was, he 
was not a prophet." 

63 



FANNY KEMBLE 



a- 



'Perhaps he was not so bad a sooth- 
sayer. In the time you have had for 
quiet life and work you have made 
more progress than you could but for 
your knowledge of life and people and 
the outside world. 

" Quiet life does not come to any of 
us. We never had any real life. I 
think if we could trace our family back 
to the Garden of Eden we should find 
the original Kemble in a mocking-bird 
that spent his life imitating the 
sounds he heard and pretending to be 
any kind of bird that he was not. We 
have been somebody else so long that 
we never find ourselves.' 9 

"It is beautiful to be able to be any 
kind of bird at will. It expands the 
sympathetic nature and makes life va- 
ried and interesting.' ' 

"If one could feel, with my Aunt 
Sarah Siddons, that there is nothing 
worth living for but upturned faces in 

64 



FANNY KEMBLE 



the pit it would be the ideal life. She 
was the goddess of my childhood. I 
was not a good child. I intended to be 
but native instinct and adverse fate 
were against me. Once I had been un- 
usually fractious and was turned over 
to my Aunt Sarah for reproof. She 
took me on her lap and talked to me 
seriously, giving me wise advice, I sup- 
pose, but I did not hear a word she 
said for looking at her exquisite face. 
When she paused to note the effect of 
her lecture I exclaimed in a rapture of 
admiration, 'What lovely eyes you 
have!' She gave me up in despair, put 
me down on the floor and walked off 
laughing. I was not a born actress; I 
went on the stage because I had to do 
something and there was nothing else 
for me." 

"You had the talent, at least; I have 
heard that you were the real Juliet her- 
self when you were sixteen and six 

65 



FANNY KEMBLE 



weeks after you first thought of going 
on the stage.' ' 

"That was because my beautiful 
father was my Romeo and my mother 
came out of her years of retirement 
just to be Nurse for me. Now, I was 
born for the life at Lenox. I could even 
practice art better on that natural stage 
than anywhere else. The old boatman 
who used to take me out on Laurel Lake 
to fish said that no one knew anything 
about me who had never heard me on 
the Lenox Mountains. The reason was 
that I lived in Lenox; in other places 
I only appeared. Lenox disappointed 
me only once; that was when I gave a 
reading for the benefit of the poor in 
the community and discovered too late 
that there were no poor and that the 
people were offended by my well-meant 
efforts to do good. After that I waited 
till I found the sore before applying 
the healing plaster of charity.' ' 

66 



FANNY KEMBLB 



With the proceeds from her readings 
the radiant Fanny purchased a cottage 
in Lenox and spent her latest years 
there in recording the events of her 
long and varied life and in her peace- 
ful, studious seclusion succeeded in 
"finding herself/ ' as she had wished. 



67 



ANNA CORA MOWATT 

THE beautiful Anna Cora Mowatt, 
whom we knew as a retired ac- 
tress in Richmond, had not that 
innate love of the stage which charac- 
terizes those who achieve such brilliant 
careers in the mimic world. Through 
the influence of a pastor of rigid views 
upon the subject she had been imbued 
with the impression that the theater 
was the center of all evil. 

"The first time I ever felt even the 
slightest willingness to subject myself 
to contact with so wicked a thing was 
when Fanny Kemble w^as playing in a 
theater near our home. I wanted to see 
her more than I had ever wanted any- 
thing else, but dared not let my wish 
be known through fear of being laughed 
at for wanting to see something of 
which I had always before expressed so 
strong a disapproval. As I walked one 

68 




4^' N S~ , <f , • 



C<7-^c*~ a^^c^orz^^\ <^2^£^£<^ 



ANNA CORA MOWATT 



day with my older sister, our father 
came to us and asked her if she would 
like to go to see Fanny Kemble. I 
wished that he would ask me, but he 
went on talking as if so wild an idea 
could not occur to him. After awhile 
he turned to me and said, 'I suppose 
you would not care to go/ I admitted 
that I should like to see the divine Fan- 
ny and so received my first invita- 
tion to the theater and yielded to the 
fascination of that most brilliant crea- 
ture/ ' 

"Did you become an enthusiastic 
theater patron from that time?" 

"No; I thought Fanny Kemble could 
glorify anything, but my sentiments in 
regard to the stage in general remained 
unmodified. When sorrow fell upon me 
and want came uncomfortably near I 
gave public readings, but when success 
brought me a flattering offer to go upon 
the stage I felt almost offended, though 

69 



ANNA CORA MOWATT 



I trust that I declined with a proper 
feeling of gratitude." 

"But you wrote for the stage," I 
said. 

"It was the success of my play ' Fash- 
ion' that first suggested my going into 
stage work. I wanted to view things 
from the sublime standpoint of the om- 
niscient actor who knows so much better 
what the playwright means than he does 
himself, and smiles at the hallucination 
of the feeble-minded author that he 
knows the meaning of his own words. 
Three weeks after I had determined to 
take up the work I appeared in 'The 
Lady of Lyons' with but one rehearsal. 
When the play was over the audience 
all rose and showered a wealth of flow- 
ers over me." 

"Such beautiful things happen to 
stage ladies, don't they?" 

"Sometimes; and then again things 
are not so pleasant. I used to think 

70 



ANNA CORA MOWATT 



that the property man was the one in- 
fallible memory freak who could not 
possibly forget anything. This illusion 
remained with me until one evening 
when I was playing Juliet that Infal- 
lible One forgot the bottle containing 
the sleeping potion. Some kind of a 
bottle was necessary and the property 
man picked up the first at hand and 
shoved it over. At the words, ' Romeo! 
This do I drink to thee!' I placed the 
bottle to my lips and swallowed the 
draught. When the scene closed the 
prompter rushed up with the cry, 'Good 
gracious ! You have been drinking from 
my bottle of ink!' I felt like the dying 
wit who, having been accidentally given 
ink instead of medicine, asked for a 
piece of blotting paper which he might 
swallow." 

As a child, notwithstanding her aver- 
sion to the stage, Anna Cora was the 
playwright and star of the Mowatt 

71 



ANNA CORA MOWATT 



family cast, though she said that her 
little sister Julia had the greatest talent 
in the household. Her play of "Ghil- 
zara" had no hero, the only male char- 
acter in it being a boy of ten years, put 
in to be played by the little Julia. "But 
I do not want her to go on the stage,' ' 
said the actress, whose brilliant success 
had never won her heart away from the 
home life that she loved and had relin- 
quished when the companion of that life 
had lost fortune and wealth and was 
compelled to give the reins of business 
government into her unaccustomed 
hands. Well did she accomplish her 
task, retaining all the while the same 
loving heart and faithful devotion that 
had inspired her when at fifteen she had 
given her life to the chosen one. 



72 



ELLEN TREE 

ELLEN TREE., known off the stage 
| as Mrs. Charles Kean, was more 
continuously enveloped in stage 
atmosphere than anyone else I have 
ever known. Others forget at times that 
they are actresses, or remember it with 
a sensation of relief that they can now 
and then throw off the mimic part and 
be themselves by way of variety. She 
used to stab the butter with the knife 
in a manner which suggested that she 
was doing deadly things to some un- 
fortunate stage villain. She would or- 
der a spool of thread in a voice that 
threw the clerk into a nervous chill from 
which he recovered with difficulty and 
the assistance of a physician. She im- 
pressed me with the idea that she slept 
on the verge of a volcano in eruption 
with thunderstorms sweeping over her 
and an earthquake shaking her couch. 

73 



ELLEN TREE 



I first saw Ellen Tree in Canada 
when General Pickett and I were exiles, 
known by an assumed name, "Ed- 
wards," his middle name. One evening 
when I was putting baby, who was un- 
usually fretful, to sleep she came in with 
a ' ' Banquo-is-buried-and-cannot-come- 
out - of - his - grave" manner and said, 
"The child, — is't ill, or doth it need the 
rod withal?" He seemed to need noth- 
ing but her startling presence, for he 
immediately quit crying and fixed his 
eyes upon her face until he was hypno- 
tized to sleep. She invited the General 
and me to the theater that evening to 
see her and Mr. Kean in "Hamlet." 
Meeting her after I had returned to my 
own country and name she said : 

"You look so much like a Mrs. Ed- 
wards whom I met in Canada. When 
I was there again I tried to find her and 
the dear little baby, George, who had 
such peachy cheeks and glorious eyes, 

74 



ELLEN TREE 



but they had gone and I could find no 
trace of them." 

"I am Mrs. Edwards," I replied, and 
explained the . name by which she had 
known me and introduced her again to 
the little boy whom she remembered as 
a baby, and who still had the " peachy 
cheeks and glorious eyes." She was 
very glad to see us again and have a 
pleasant talk of the old Canadian days. 

"How you made me cry my eyes out 
and then in the farce Toodles made me 
laugh until the tears came again, ' ' I said. 

"I am glad that you laughed after- 
ward," replied Ellen, "for I do not like 
to send my audience home crying; it 
seems too ill a reward for the goodness 
of people in filling theaters for me and 
it is unkind to make folks unhappy." 

"I thought you were unhappy, too. I 
am older now and have learned that 
people, both on and off the stage, learn 
to simulate unhappiness at will." 

75 



ELLEN TREE 



"But I was unhappy, I suppose/' re- 
turned Ellen. "I recall one play in 
which it was my sorrowful fate to see 
my husband die in the last scene. He 
was not only my play husband but my 
own Charles off the stage. It would 
seem that I might have been accus- 
tomed to the bereavement by that time, 
having suffered it often before, but I 
threw myself upon the body in a burst 
of uncontrollable grief, wildly implor- 
ing him to tell me that he was not dead. 
He gave the desired information in 
terms so emphatic and so nearly verg- 
ing upon profanity that I felt instantly 
assured that he was not anywhere near 
dissolution. The audience could not 
hear what he said, and took my pas- 
sionate grief for a part of the play, so 
I let myself be carried off the stage 
amid enthusiastic applause. When the 
only mourner over Mr. Kean's lifeless 
body was his faithful dog the illusion 

76 



ELLEN TREE 



was lost and the audience went off into 
fits of laughter that quite ruined the 
tragedy. Mr. Kean's dog loved him 
with a devotion of which not many 
human hearts are capable. Watching 
from the wings, the faithful animal saw 
his master fall under the attack of the 
stage villain whose histrionic duty was 
to kill the star with a dagger thrust. 
Bushing out the dog bestrode the dead 
man and snapped viciously at the mur- 
derer whose next business was to carry 
off the inanimate body. As the dog 
could not be coaxed to leave his dead 
master and the actor dared not ap- 
proach the ferocious guardian, the cur- 
tain hastily fell amid the laughter and 
uproarious plaudits of the spectators. 
That was the dog's first and last ap- 
pearance upon any stage, but if a human 
actor had made so great a sensation at 
his debut he would immediately have 
blazed into a star of the first magni- 
tude.' ' 77 



ELLEN TREE 



Ellen Tree had the most infectious 
and memory-haunting laugh on the 
stage, and many an old-time admirer 
of the gay and laughing " Beatrice' ' 
keeps in the sunniest corner of his heart 
the echo of the merry peal behind the 
scenes which announced the approach 
of Shakspeare's pet hoyden. 



78 



KATE FIELD 

WHEN Anthony Trollope wrote 
of Kate Field, "She is a ray 
of light to me from which I 
can always strike a spark by thinking 
of her," he expressed the feeling that 
most people had in meeting her, even 
though it might not have occurred to 
them to voice the impression. There 
was in her radiant personality a glow 
that flashed a lasting light into the lives 
that came near her own. 

While still a school-girl Kate Field 
had known and loved and been loved 
by many of the great souls which had 
been lent to the world for a time to 
show how grand a thing a human mind 
could be when God had smiled upon it 
as it started upon its flight to earth. 
Among the inspired ones she knew in 
her early days in Florence were the 

79 



KATE FIELD 



Brownings and their circle, who became 
her life-long friends. 

"And you even got something out of 
the erratic, distorted soul of Walter 
Savage Landor?" I asked when she 
talked of those days. 

"Oh, that 'Mad Englishman/ as the 
Florentines called him — I think I did 
get more of reality and, perhaps, ideal- 
ity, out of his nature than anybody else 
ever did ; so the people of Florence said. 
But they did not know him, and never 
could, though he had lived within view 
of them a hundred lifetimes. How could 
the romantic, pleasure-loving Floren- 
tines know anything about the storms 
and dusky calms and deeps and shallows 
of such a nature as that of Mr. Landor % 
Mr. and Mrs. Browning were his 
friends. I think they were born the 
friends of everybody. Only a few had 
the advantage of cashing in their 
cheques on the Browning bank of af- 

80 



KATE FIELD 



fection, because ill health kept Mrs. 
Browning in a secluded life and they 
were so all in all to each other that they 
had little need of the outside world. 
But, oh, how good they were to those 
who entered their circle ! Their friend- 
ship radiated blessing upon all who 
came near. It was natural that they 
should care for the strange, lonely, 
burry old man who, having few of his 
own time to draw into his life circle, 
went back to the dead ages of Greece 
and Rome for most of his companions." 

"That is what makes it seem so 
strange that you and Landor should 
have been such good friends. He was 
of a long gone yesterday; you are of a 
to-morrow that we are hoping for — 
sometime. I cannot see the ground on 
which you could meet." 

"I suppose," said Kate, "that is the 
very reason that we were interested in 
each other. He was an antique riddle 

81 



KATE FIELD 



to me ; I must have seemed a crude and 
bewildering prophecy to him. What- 
ever may have been the reason, I think 
the dear old man really was my friend 
and was glad to see me when I came 
back to Florence after years of absence. 
The album of pictures he gave me then, 
the last time I ever saw him, is one of 
my treasured possessions now and shall 
be put into a place that is worthy of it 
when I am gone." 

The remarkable versatility of Kate 
Field was indicated by her brilliant con- 
versational talent so well remembered 
by all who knew her socially, as well as 
by her success as singer, actress, play- 
wright, lecturer, editor and author, and 
with it all a faculty which amounted to 
a positive genius for retaining through 
life the many friends won by her irre- 
sistible charm and kept by her earnest 
purpose and depth of character. 

Kate Field lived a brilliant and fas- 
82 



KATE FIELD 



cinating life and had the good fortune, 
which comes to few toilers, of giving 
herself to her work up to the last day. 
She spent one morning writing in her 
vigorous manner upon the subject 
which had led her upon a tour of in- 
vestigation in the Hawaiian Islands. At 
noon she took ship from a neighboring 
island to Honolulu; the next day, with 
the Pacific waves all around her as the 
boat plied its way to port she went to 
her Eternal Home as calmly as a sunny 
summer day sinking to rest. 



83 



LUCY LARCOM 

THROUGH a woodland that was 
dear to me long ago a streamlet 
ran, banked with blue and white 
violets. It rippled down from a moun- 
tain and purled through the forest 
glade over white pebbles that sparkled 
like jewels through the pellucid water. 
I had never seen another brook so clear 
and so limpidly pure. A leaf would now 
and then drop from a tree bending over, 
would drift and dance a moment in the 
air, swerve downward to the water 
and float like a little boat with a cargo 
of palpitant hopes bound for a wide 
unknown sea. 

As I watched the ripples and listened 
to their soft melody there came to my 
thought some bits of poetry I had seen 
in a magazine, signed "Lucy Larcom"; 
an assumed name I had supposed, as it 
was in the days of alliterative pen- 

84 



LUCY LARCOM 



names. There was the same lilting 
music in the lines as in the ripple of the 
brook and the purity of thought and 
expression were of the same silvery 
whiteness. Meeting Miss Larcom I 
spoke of what I had though about her 
name and she told me that it was from 
the old family name " Lark-Holme/ ' 
the home of the larks. 

"I do not like it myself as a name to 
write under," she said, "for the reason 
that it is so likely to be taken for a 
cover of a writer's identity." 

Lucy Larcom 's home was by the sea, 
about ten miles from the "Reef of Nor- 
man's Woe," but she confided to me 
what she regarded as the disloyal fact 
that she did not love the sea as much as 
the mountains. 

"Of course I love the sea," she said. 
"I am never tired of the surges that 
dash in like race-horses, and reel back 
and disappear in the deeps. I like to 

85 



LUCY LARCOM 



see the great waves go by with crests 
shining silver in the sun. The grand 
anthem that rolls out from the heart of 
the ocean fills me with awe. But I do 
not need the sea as I need the moun- 
tains. They are so strong ; they give 
protection just by standing like a ma- 
jestic wall between us and any possible 
foe. They are like a great soul reaching 
up to the sky." 

Miss Larcom seemed to me the great 
soul that aspired aloft, she was so calm 
and steady and unmoved by the triviali- 
ties that at times sway weaker beings, 
and I tried to tell her my thought. She 
looked bewildered and said : 

"I am only a very small blade of 
grass growing at the foot of the 
mountain and looking up to my pro- 
tector." 

The beauty of the sea was enchant- 
ment to her and brought to us fairy 
glimpses through her poet-eyes: 

86 



LUCY LARCOM 



"High tide, and the year at ebb; 
The sea is a dream to-day; 
The sky is a gossamer web 
Of sapphire, pearl and gray." 

In "A New England Girlhood" she 
felt, as she expressed it, that she was 
" just taking a little journey backward" 
into her childhood and the young girl- 
hood spent in the Lowell Mills, where 
her first writing was done as a con- 
tributor to the " Lowell Offering," from 
which a volume of selections was made 
and published in London under the title 
of "Mind among the Spindles." In a 
course of lectures on literature, deliv- 
ered in Paris, one discourse was devoted 
entirely to the significance and merit of 
the periodical which was wholly the 
product of the Lowell mill-girls. 

This was not the least useful period 
of Lucy Larcom's education, for in it 
she learned many lessons of patience, 
industry and aspiration. It cannot be 

87 



LUCY LARCOM 



known how much of her strength of 
character and wholesome optimism are 
due to those early years when she 
studied the harmonies of work and life 
as she wove her perfect web. 



88 




fZrUs^A 






CLARA BARTON 

WITH the passing of Clara Bar- 
ton there went from earth a 
soul so great that one is awed 
to helplessness by the effort to measure 
the height and depth of the Divine 
Thought that came to humanity in the 
brave, strong, universal heart of the 
frail, gentle, soft- voiced " Angel of the 
Battlefield." She had just returned 
from a great foreign war when I first 
drew near enough to her to feel the 
heartbeat of her sublime love and sym- 
pathy. 

"How did you first make up your 
mind to do this great work?" I asked. 

"I did not make up my mind," she 
replied with a smile of wonderment at 
my question. "Things came to me as if 
ordered by a world-contriolling power. 
When I was a timid child, afraid of all 
things, my brother had an illness that 

89 



CLARA BARTON 



was thought to be mortal. In my care 
for him I lost all thought of self and 
lived only in my love for him and sym- 
pathy with his suffering. For two years 
my life was wholly absorbed in nurs- 
ing him and while I was happy and 
thankful when he came back to life and 
health, I felt as if my work was over." 

"It was not to be over until you had 
fulfilled your mission." 

"I never had a mission and don't 
know what I could have done with one. 
But I've always had all that I could 
possibly do and as soon as one thing was 
done another stepped in." 

"You were one of the first to enlist 
when the war began, were you not?" 

"My enlistment was so unconscious 
that I had no thought of going out with 
the army until I was on the field. I was 
in Washington when the wounded were 
brought in from Baltimore under the 
care of Dr. Joseph Stedman, of Jamaica 

90 



CLARA BARTON 



Plain, whom I saw here in your home 
for the first time since that awful day. 
I went to the station to meet the sol- 
diers, and their pain and their courage 
took possession of me and I felt that 
the opportunity to help them was all 
that life held for me. When they began 
to think again and memories of home 
came to them it was a joy unutterable 
to write to their loved ones and tell them 
that all was well. So the dear ones at 
home would send gifts for their boys 
and ask me to see that they went to 
their destination and in a little while 
quantities of things were coming to me 
to be distributed where needed. Soon it 
became necessary to carry supplies for 
the wounded to the front, then came the 
battlefield with all its horrors and the 
long fight with death, the victory or the 
heartbreak at the end. In it all I 
learned that life is the giving of oneself 
to save others." 

91 



CLARA BARTON 



"You are so brave that you can face 
any danger unafraid." 

"I brave? It always seems strange 
when anyone calls me that. I am the 
most timid person on earth, I think. I 
was always afraid of everything except 
when so absorbed in helping the unfor- 
tunate that thought of self was impos- 
sible. I never could assert myself in 
any way except when some one was to 
be rescued from danger or pain. Even 
now I would rather work on the field 
with bullets flying around me, or stand 
by the guns in battle, than preside at 
a public meeting." 

Clara Barton was a Christmas gift to 
the world and was most richly endowed 
with the spirit of that holy day on which 
she came to humanity. Many women 
win admiration and fame in the exer- 
cise of various gifts but none other has 
come so near the great pulsing heart of 
life as she who brought help and com- 

92 



CLARA BARTON 



fort not on the battlefield alone but 
wherever sorrow and calamity had 
brought desolation. 

From her woodland home in Glen Echo 
her soul passed beyond to the kindred 
spirits who through sorrow and cruci- 
fixion had found Eternal Life. Over 
almost impassable roads loving friends 
took her back to her childhood home. In 
one part of the route it was necessary to 
go by wagon through ice and snow and 
the progress was very slow. One of the 
sorrowful group urged the driver to 
make all speed he could to catch a boat- 
He promised to use his best effort, and 
asked who was in the coffin. Upon be- 
ing informed he said, " Clara Barton! 
She saved my father's life when he was 
wounded in battle. Do not be afraid; 
do not be afraid ; I will take you there in 
time.'' So, on her last journey the 
Angel of Pain was helped along the way 
by a grateful heart. 

93 



MRS. ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

WHEN Colonel Robert E. Lee 
of the United States Army de- 
cided to cast in his lot with his 
native State his wife said to him, 
" Whichever way you go will be the 
path of duty. You will think it right, 
and I shall be satisfied." She bravely 
kept her word, though years later she 
could not repress the plaint, "If I could 
forget my old home I think I should be 
happy." To forget the beauties and 
the historic riches of Arlington with its 
treasure of Washington relics which 
had come down to the mistress of that 
magnificent home from her great- 
grandmother, Martha Custis Washing- 
ton^ was an impossibility. Her thoughts 
often turned back to the stately man- 
sion and the majestic trees and the 
clear sweep of greensward stretching 
down to the river, as she sat in her 

94 



MES. ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

Richmond home in a room looking out 
upon a veranda shaded by ailanthus 
trees, and knitted socks and gloves for 
the soldiers, . which was all that she 
could do to help for she could not leave 
her chair except when she was carried. 
She and her daughters in one month 
gave 196 pairs of socks and gloves to 
one brigade, though she was an invalid 
and her daughters worked in the city 
hospitals. 

"I am thankful there is one thing I 
can do," she said putting a newly fin- 
ished pair of socks on the pile which 
represented the day's work. 

"Who else can do it so well and so 
quickly t" 

"No one else has so much experience. 
Other people can do other and more 
important things.' ' 

"None of us can do anything as im- 
portant as you do in setting us an ex- 
ample of patience and calmness. But 

95 



MRS. ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

are you not in your heart wild with joy 
when General Lee wins?" 

"I am thankful, my dear. I know 
the General always does his best and 
am content to be quiet when he wins 
and calm when he loses." 

Mrs. Lee took up a pair of socks and 
began to mend them with fingers so 
trained to work that they never waited 
upon conversation. 

"I mend the General's socks and 
give them to the hospital. The head 
nurse told me that when a man is sup- 
posed to be lingering too long in hos- 
pital, instead of sending him away they 
give him a pair of the General's socks 
and he straightway betakes himself to 
the field." 

"A proof, perhaps, that the influence 
of a man's spirit remains in everything 
he has touched." 

"Can you knit?" she asked me. 

"Not very much. I tried to round 
96 



MRS. ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

off a heel once." Lest she should think 
me wholly devoid of useful accomplish- 
ments I added, "I can paint/ ' 

She laughed. 

"I fear that would not be of much 
use. I think you can sing, too. Gen- 
eral Pickett brought another dear lit- 
tle girl to see me once. She was 
beautiful and was very fond of General 
Pickett. Now don't be jealous; she 
was his sister Jinnie. She sang de- 
lightfully. Most people open their 
mouths wide when they sing, but she 
didn't. She sang every note through a 
kiss that made it sound like a bird- 
note." 

Sincerity was the leading character- 
istic of Mrs. Lee. When a friend sub- 
mitted to her the manuscript of a 
biography of the General she paused at 
an anecdote and asked : 

"Does that sound like General Lee?" 

"Perhaps not," was the reply, "but 
97 



MRS. ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

it will spoil the whole chapter if I leave 
out that part." 

"But you don't want to put in any- 
thing about General Lee that is not 
true." 

The anecdote was omitted. 

Only once after the heartbreaking 
parting at the beginning of the war did 
she see that dear home for which she 
so longed. All the joys that had once 
made it an enchanted garden of dreams 
had changed to ghosts that haunted the 
sad old place and wailed dirges where 
in early days she and her boy lover, 
Robert Lee, had planted an avenue of 
trees that shaded their walks in after 
years. She could not endure the loneli- 
ness and said, "Let me get a drink of 
water from the spring and then take 
me away." She spent some days in 
Alexandria and on Sunday the young 
men carried her chair into Christ 
Church that she might join in the serv- 

98 



MRS. ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

ice where her great grandmother had 
worshipped and where George Wash- 
ington was a vestryman. In all the Lex- 
ington years she was a prisoner to pain 
and General Lee would always bring 
in at the eventide the most beautiful 
event of the day to lighten her clouded 
life. - ' Mrs. Lee, ' ' he said once, ' i I have 
such a nice thing to tell you to-day. I 
have had a letter from one of 'my boys' 
and he tells me that he is going to be 
married and that he wishes me to give 
his wife the most beautiful bridal pres- 
ent that a woman could desire. He 
wants me to write her a letter and sign 
it with my name." 



99 



LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

IN Number 28, Rutland Square, Bos- 
ton, there was for many years the 
best American version of a genuine 
salon that has ever been known. Not 
only were the greatest writers of our 
own country to be found there, but 
through the graphic delineations given 
by the hostess, Mrs. Moulton, the best 
authors of other countries were men- 
tally present. All poet souls recognized 
her as kindred with themselves and 
established a bond of sympathy which 
by radiation extended itself to all who 
were so happy as to come within her 
sphere. Mrs. Moulton 's mind was a 
translucent window through which the 
sun of genius lit the souls of her neigh- 
bors. No less was it a creative force to 
evolve centers of light all its own. 

One of the most prized among Mrs. 
Moulton 's friends was the blind poet, 

100 




LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 



LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Philip Bourke Marston, whose physi- 
cal eyes had been closed to earthly 
things that his soul might behold in all 
their splendor the beauties of earth and 
sky glorified to the spiritual sight. One 
of his characteristics was the power to 
visualize the scenes which were his by 
internal perception, as when he wrote 
of the "most exquisite and natural 
blending of strong emotion with the 
sense of external nature" in Mrs. 
Moulton's poetry. 

"He seemed to have a supernaturally 
clear vision," said Mrs. Moulton. "All 
the great canvas of Nature was spread 
out to his view and irradiated by his 
spiritualized imagination." 

'His sea poetry is majestic," I said. 
'The sadness of the deep voice of 
the sea appealed to the sorrow in his 
heart and awakened an echo that 
brought all the full, deep meaning to 
the reader." 

101 



it- 

il! 



LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"The closing of his eves to the sun- 
light must have darkened his life in 
many ways." 

"That was his first grief, coming 
upon him from an accidental blow in 
play when he was three years old," re- 
plied Mrs. Moulton. 

"He was blind so young?" 

"When some one asked him that 
question years later he said, 'No, I was 
not blind then. I could not read, nor 
see the face of a friend, but I could see 
the waving of the trees in the wind, 
catch the glint of gold in the sun, the 
green of the grass, the glory of sunset 
and the surging of the waves. It was 
so different from the black pall that 
closed around me later.' His mother 
was his good angel, being eyes and all 
things for him, sharing his aspirations 
and seeing his visions. She died when 
he was twenty. Then his sister Ciceley 
was everything to him that the devoted 

102 



LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

mother had been until one sad morning 
she died in my room where she was 
making me a morning visit. Her father 
and brother were absent for a short trip 
on the continent. No one else could 
ever have been to him what she was, 
except her whom he called 'the one 
whose love was the chief joy of my life/ 
in the pathetic dedication of his first 
book of poems, ' Song-tide/ to the 
memory of the loving and loyal girl 
who would have been his wife had not 
death claimed her for a bride. Three 
years later his soul-brother, Oliver 
Madox Brown, the brilliant boy in the 
twentieth year of his poet-artist life, 
passed away, and father and son were 
left alone with each other and memo- 
ries. Yet Philip Marston could not be 
alone, for he had always his visions, 
and I think that never in the world 
had any man such friends, — friends 
who were lovers, adorers and guardian 

103 



LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

angels, attracted to him by his irresisti- 
ble beauty of face and manner and held 
enchained by the yet greater loveliness 
of his soul." 

Though Mrs. Moulton had many 
friends in her own country, she won her 
highest appreciation in England. 
Uncle Sam was still in the struggle for 
life and prosperity and had not leisure 
for the delicate aroma of sentiment 
which gave her melodious lines an irre- 
sistible attraction in a circle permeated 
by the literary spirit of that High 
Priest of Sentiment, Alfred Tennyson. 
Her English friends were always held 
by her in especially loving remem- 
brance. 



104 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 

IN 1869 " Little Women" came into 
the world and 'took by storm all 
young people and all people who 
had once been young. 

Miss Alcott had been known as a 
writer of fairy tales, had published a 
volume of " Flower Fables" and had 
contributed a number of stories to Bos- 
ton journals. In 1863 she published her 
experiences in a war hospital, under 
the title of " Hospital Sketches," hav- 
ing been compelled by the failure of her 
health to give up the work into which 
she had put her strength and patriotic 
enthusiasm. To comfort herself for 
the disappointment she recorded her 
war memories, putting into the volume 
so much of the earnestness and sym- 
pathy that had formerly gone into her 
hospital work that her story reached 
the hearts of the readers and became a 

105 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 



popular book. Some years later her 
novel of " Moods " was published. 

It was not until " Little Women' ' had 
been added to the ever-increasing list 
of Miss Alcott's works that her public 
became acquainted with the home life 
and inner thought of the author. It 
was soon discovered that the " Little 
Women" were the author and her sis- 
ters in the old home at Concord and the 
interest was as great as that of watch- 
ing a group of young lives expanding 
before the eyes of the readers. There 
was a heart knowledge and a heart in- 
terest in the book not to be found in 
fiction. 

Miss Alcott's friends were not only 
surprised but incredulous when it was 
discovered that she was the author of 
the volume in "No Name Series/' 
called "A Modern Mephistopheles. " I 
could scarcely accept the statement 
when first presented, but it recalled to 

106 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 



me a conversation I once had with her 
in Boston. Speaking of "Little Wom- 
en" I said: 

"The story is so natural and lifelike 
that it shows your true style of writ- 
ing, — the pure and gentle type, with in- 
nocent young lives and the events that 
would inevitably befall bright girls and 
boys with the thoughts and feelings be- 
fitting a quiet loving home circle." 

"Not exactly that," she replied. "I 
think my natural ambition is for the 
lurid style. I indulge in gorgeous fan- 
cies and wish that I dared inscribe 
them upon my pages and set them be- 
fore the public." 

' ' Why not ? " I asked. ' ' There seems 
to be no reason why you should not be 
gorgeous if you like." 

"How should I dare to interfere 
with the proper grayness of old Con- 
cord? The dear old town has never 
known a startling hue since the red- 
107 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 



coats were there. Far be it from me to 
inject an inharmonious color into the 
neutral tint. And my favorite charac- 
ters! Suppose they went to cavorting 
at their own sweet will, to the infinite 
horror of dear Mr. Emerson, who 
never imagined a Concord person as 
walking off a plumb line stretched be- 
tween two pearly clouds in the empy- 
rean. To have had Mr. Emerson for an 
intellectual god all one's life is to be in- 
vested with a chain armor of propriety. ' ' 

"The privilege of having such a 
Titan of intellect to worship is worth 
being subjected to some trammels of 
propriety. " 

"And what would my own good 
father think of me/' she asked, "if I 
set folks to doing the things that I have 
a longing to see my people do f No, my 
dear, I shall always be a wretched vic- 
tim to the respectable traditions of 
Concord. " 

108 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 



The "No Name" gave poor Louisa 
an opportunity to escape for a moment 
from the Concord traditions, and I 
think she enjoyed the writing of every 
sentence in the "Mephistopheles." 

Perhaps the Seer of Concord never 
had a more devout worshipper than 
Louisa Alcott who, when a child, wrote 
him adoring letters which were never 
sent. When she was a mature woman 
with her well-earned honors thick upon 
her a great sorrow, the death of her 
best loved sister, May, the "Amy" of 
"Little Women," was announced first 
to Mr. Emerson that he might break 
the tidings gently to her and com- 
fort her with his tender, loving sym- 
pathy. 

As the home circle narrowed by the 
passing of its members the tender 
bond of affection between Louisa Al- 
cott and her father drew yet closer and 
the feeling of interdependence grew 
109 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 



still deeper till death came and the old 
house was left desolate. At the funeral 
of Mr. Alcott the mourners were yet 
more deeply saddened by the message 
that Louisa had just passed from 
earth. 



no 



CELIA THAXTER 

THERE are people who are born 
for the sea. Life without its 
white foam-horses galloping 
shoreward in an endless succession of 
charges upon the sands and wild 
dashes backward in ever recurring de- 
feat would be like a symphony without 
its theme. The melody would fall on 
silence without the deep basso-pro- 
fundo of the rolling surges to sustain 
its rich chords. 

Of these was Celia Thaxter. I never 
think of her without seeing her on Ap- 
pledore, " Among the Isles of Shoals/' 
with her chains of sea-shells encircling 
neck and wrists, melting into the soft 
grayness of her dress that she wore 
with a simplicity and dignity which 
made me think her born of the deep 
gray stately ocean that she loved. Her 
window gave us a view of the dashing 
ill 



CELIA THAXTEE 



white foam, the middle distant waves, 
calm and slow in the majestic silence of 
illimitable power, and the far-off per- 
spective of high lights and dim shadows 
with the sapphirine sky bending to 
touch the fading sea-line. 

"My love for it has failed but once," 
she said. "Then I was lonely and 
wretched for days. There had been a 
terrible storm and a ship had gone to 
wreck before my eyes. I had seen the 
poor creature struggling in the boiling 
waves until it parted and the surges 
swept over it. No boat could live on 
that tempestuous water. The lifeboats 
of the ship set out and went down al- 
most as soon as they touched the waves. 
Nothing could go out from shore and 
the only thing for us was to watch the 
storm and its victims to the end." 

"It is our helplessness in the storms 
of life that breaks our hearts," I 
said. 

112 



CELIA THAXTER 



"Most of all I felt the truth of that 
the next morning. When I saw the 
poor, pallid, sea-drenched forms upon 
the beach I raged against the wicked sea 
for its cruelty. Then reason came and 
told me that it was not the sea that was 
cruel; the winds had made a victim of 
the ocean as well as of the people who 
had put their trust in boat and wave. 
The sea was not treacherous; it re- 
ceived them with joy and promised 
them fair because it wished them well. 
It would reunite long-parted friends; 
it would take men and women to new 
homes to find the peace that was denied 
them in the land of their birth ; it would 
bear invalids to healthful climes where 
life and strength and happiness would 
return. All these things the good, gen- 
erous loving sea would do, but the cruel 
winds come and its hopes are lost. For 
days afterward the surges moaned a 
dirge for the peaceful dead and the sor- 
113 



CELIA THAXTEB, 



rowful living. Since then I have not 
misjudged my sea and I love it." 

"Consider the sea's listless chime: 
Time's self it is, made audible, — 
The murmur of the earth's own shell." 

I quoted. 

"You love Rossetti? He hears and 
sees so many things. Those lines come 
back to me when I hold a seashell to 
my ear. It is like the voice of earth. 
Rushing, moaning, sorrowful, but with 
a thread of song that is like the faint 
heralding of a great joy coming in the 
distance, dimly heard when the soul is 
a-tiptoe with prophecy, the good time 
coming when all the earth shall join in 
the chorus of good will and serene con- 
tent." 

Celia Thaxter's garden was a glory 
of color and bloom and, walking 
through its paths, she looked like the 
goddess of the lilies, regal and fair and 

114 



CELIA THAXTBR 



sweet. The birds she loved and petted 
perched on the boughs above and sang 
for her their most beautiful and happy 
songs. 

" Flowers will live always for us," 
she said. "Life could not be without 
them. I am sure that Keats breathed 
the fragrance of the narcissus that I 
saw dying on his grave." 

Among her flowers the Angel of the 
Better Life found her, and loving 
lhands heaped the fragrant blossoms 
high upon her grave and I think, like 
Keats, she knew that they were there, 
and was glad. 



115 



MRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY 
"THE BELLE OF THE FIFTIES" 

THE passing of Mrs. Virginia 
Clay-Clopton but a few weeks 
prior to the time at which I write 
broke a golden link that bound to the 
commonplace business era of the pres- 
ent the olden days that have passed 
into tradition and romance. 

In the golden Fifties when "Washing- 
ton, all unconsciously, was dancing 
over a volcano rumbling with the com- 
ing eruption the gayest and brightest 
and wittiest woman in the brilliant 
throng was the beautiful young wife of 
Senator Clement C. Clay, who had 
come from her secluded Alabama home, 
a novice in the social world, timid, as 
she has told us, in the presence of an 
older belle whom she greatly admired, 
and had soon become the radiant center 
of the social whirl. Whether she 

116 




5^^ 



fe/*^, c^^^yL^XZ 






MES. CLEMENT C. CLAY 

sparkled in her natural form as the 
reigning queen of grace and beauty or 
appeared in the homely and grotesque 
guise of Mrs. Partington, convulsing 
the entire company with laughter, she 
was supreme. "Clay, you deprived the 
stage of its most brilliant ornament 
When vou married Mrs. Clav." said a 
brother Senator to Senator Clay at the 
Owyn ball where the pseudo Mrs. Part- 
ington filled the ball-room with merri- 
ment for the entire evening. 

Sometimes such gayety and radiance 
belong only to the sunshine and when 
heavy clouds darken the day the 
evanescent gleam vanishes. The brill- 
iance of Mrs. Clay was a torch illumi- 
nating the darkest night. In the Con- 
federacy when gloom and uncertainty 
hung over all southern hearts her 
gayety glowed through the darkness 
and helped her people to endure loss 
and sorrow. 

117 



MRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY 

As a hostess Mrs. Clay was superb. 
Her unlimited hospitality and genius 
for entertaining overcame the contract- 
ed limitations of southern resources in 
war time and made her home as popu- 
lar a social center as it had been in the 
brighter days of her queenship in 
Washington. Her dwelling was a kind 
of Liberty Hall ! in which every comfort 
that could be obtained was furnished 
for her guests, and they were permitted 
to enjoy life as they chose. "Lassie," 
she said to me once when I had accept- 
ed her invitation to spend with her a 
vacation from school, "I am going to 
give you a lesson in true hospitality. I 
shall let you alone. When you want me 
you will always know where to find me 
and I shall be glad to have you." I 
followed her method and had a delight- 
ful vacation. 

After our marriage the General and 
I were in Richmond and staying at the 

118 



MRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY 

home of Colonel Shields next door to 
Mrs. Clay, when the General suggested 
one evening that we call on our charm- 
ing neighbor. While we were there 
Senator Vest came in. He was then in 
the Confederate Senate; afterward for 
many years he served Missouri in the 
United States Senate. He had his vio- 
lin, which he played very beautifully, 
and Mrs. Clay waltzed with the General 
as merrily and gracefully as she could 
ever have danced at an Embassy ball in 
the National Capital when life for her 
was one long and brilliant Mayday fes- 
tival. 

The earnestness and determination 
of Mrs, Clay's character were forcibly 
shown by her rescue of her husband 
from death in his prison cell in Fort 
Monroe after the close of the war. In- 
nocent of the charges brought against 
him, he voluntarily surrendered him- 
self as soon as he learned of the order 
119 



MRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY 

for his apprehension. Denied trial, he 
was held until the rapid failure of his 
health threatened early death. Mrs. 
Clay went to Washington to plead with 
President Johnson for her husband's 
life. After repeated unavailing efforts 
to see the President and weeks of anx- 
ious waiting she was admitted. It re- 
quired many interviews to awaken the 
President to a sense of the injustice of 
leaving an innocent man to die in a 
prison cell but after a time, moved by 
the dominant character and enthusias- 
tic devotion of the wife, he became in- 
terested and promised to give favorable 
attention to the plea. While under the 
influence of the petitioner's earnest- 
ness his promises were very fair, but 
the vacillating President, after an in- 
terview with some opposing politician, 
would forget his good intentions and 
lapse into lukewarmness, meeting his 
importunate visitor upon her next ap- 

120 



MRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY 

pearance with the assertion of his in- 
ability to do anything for her. At last 
she saw him by appointment in his 
office one evening and, after pleading 
her cause anew, told him that she would 
not leave until she had the order for 
Senator Clay's release. In vain he 
sparred for time, asking her to come 
the next day, promising to sign the or- 
der and give it to her when she re- 
turned. She had lost faith in promises 
and positively refused to go without the 
all important document. In despair 
President Johnson signed the order 
and Mrs. Clay before leaving the office 
sent a telegram of good cheer to the 
heartsick prisoner. 

Mrs. Clay took the Senator to his 
Alabama home, where she nursed him 
with a devotion that was never sur- 
passed, but freedom had come too late. 
A few years later he passed into the 
eternal freedom of the soul. 
121 



MRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY 

In Washington the most intimate 
friends of Senator and Mrs. Clay were 
Senator Clopton and his charming 
wife, who lived next door to the Clays. 
They all followed the fortunes of the 
South and some time later Mrs. Clop- 
ton died. 

Many years after Mr. Clay's death 
Mr. Clopton one morning called his 
children into the library and told them 
that he wanted to consult them about 
something he wished to do, saying that 
he would not do it if they objected. 
When he explained that his desire was 
to marry Mrs. Clay the unanimous ex- 
pression of delight assured him of en- 
tire acquiescence in his aspiration. One 
of the most beautiful things in the love- 
ly woman's life was the devotion of her 
stepchildren. 

After Mr. Clopton 's death Mrs. Clay- 
Clopton passed many years of widow- 
hood in which her spirit of laughter 

122 



MRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY 

never failed her, and her youthful 
buoyancy remained as of old. Eighty- 
two years of mingled sunshine and 
shadow did not prevent her from lead- 
ing the dance at a Confederate ball 
given a few years ago, with a step al- 
most as light as that of the Belle of the 
Fifties or of the matron of the war- 
crimsoned Sixties. 



123 



MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

MRS. SANGSTER had been in- 
vited down for the week-end to 
the beautiful home of Mr. and 
Mrs. William Haxtun, where I was a 
guest on Staten Island, next door to the 
Appleton house. 

One evening when talking of many 
things old and new, especially old, Mr. 
John M. Daniel, the great War Editor 
of the South, came up for discussion 
and, from her own experience in edi- 
torial work, she was much interested in 
the fierce old editorial fighter. 

"I know and love Virginia and Vir- 
ginians/ ' she said, "and had friends in 
both armies," and we drifted into 
stories of war and camp and then into 
tales of the Old Dominion in war time 
and before, of the negroes of plantation 
days, of the Folk Lore of the South 
and romances of the olden times. Our 

124 




mm 




£ 




MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

host, a man of wide business experi- 
ence and intellectual ability, said : 

"As I have listened to you I felt as 
I did when a boy reading Hans Ander- 
sen tales. If I had known what an in- 
teresting and fascinating life we were 
breaking up down there I might have 
been an anti- Abolitionist." 

Very thoughtfully Mrs. Sangster 
raised her far-seeing eyes that looked 
only upon good things from the zenith 
to the dimmest horizon line of her sky 
and her poetic spirit lighted her gentle 
face as she said : 

"You have had a wonderfully rich 
life and you are yet but a child. You 
have had the black mammy and the 
little colored playmates, the old atmos- 
phere of the romantic South and the 
plantation life that is all over now. 
You have had the romance of war, the 
excitement of the battlefield, the love 
of the soldiers, the nursing of the 
125 



MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

wounded in hospital. You have known 
a new country, a new President and 
Cabinet and all the great changes of 
South and North alike. You have been 
the wife of a hero, the mother of chil- 
dren, the mother of an angel and now 
the greatest of all sorrows has come to 
chasten you, widowhood, and last, the 
highest boon that could come with all 
these things, the necessity for work. It 
is only through pain and loss that we 
can gain the joy of effort and the tri- 
umph of winning.' ' 

"I have had all and lost all," I said. 

" You cannot lose what you have had; 
it is yours always and the joy of reliv- 
ing it in memory and expression will 
be the greatest happiness of your life. 
Pass it on to the world before you for- 
get, and let the people see the old life 
as it was. The soil will not bring forth 
anything unless it is cultivated and, as 
in the parable, thorns and thistles will 

126 



MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

spring up and destroy the good seed. 
Cultivate the rich ground which will 
bring you a golden harvest and which 
can never be known again because its 
time is over. There can never again be 
a Confederate President and Cabinet." 

Myra, a little niece of Mr. Haxtun, 
asked Mrs. Sangster what rebels were. 
There wasn't anything in the Command- 
ments about them, was there, and did 
the Bible say what would become of 
them ? She replied : 

"My dear, in your history you are 
taught to respect rebels, though I do 
not think the Bible or the Command- 
ments say anything about them. You 
know the Continental Army were rebels 
and Washington was the greatest rebel 
of them all. I think they were the only 
American rebels. Our own Govern- 
ment was founded on the consent of the 
States with certain conditions provided 
and when there was reason to withdraw 

127 



MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

that consent the effort to do so was not 
rebellion/' 

I afterward met Mrs. Sangster at the 
University of Virginia and we went 
together to Monticello, the home of 
Thomas Jefferson. The old homestead 
was not then, as it is now, beautifully 
kept as a casket for Jeffersonian relics 
and memories and the road from the 
University of Virginia to the mansion 
of the Father of American Democracy 
was ' ' a hard road to travel. ' ■ When we 
had successfully made the journey Mrs. 
Sangster said: 

"It is almost a pity that the great old 
Democrat was not born in Boston. 
Then Massachusetts might have bought 
the old place and made it a museum 
filled with the things that were dear to 
Jefferson, objects that he had touched 
and loved, a shrine to the memory of 
the staunch old patriot where his coun- 
trymen could meet and renew their own 

128 



MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

patriotism in the memory of his devo- 
tion to his country. Men high in 
judicial realms, poets and historians, 
great scientists whose efforts are given 
for their country's honor, all would 
have met in the old mansion to seek in- 
spiration from the sacred recollections 
of the past. A wide and beautiful road 
would have led from the University 
which the great patriot founded to the 
magnificent home in which he dwelt and 
it would have been known to all the 
world as the People's Highway. " 



129 



EMILY VIRGINIA MASON 

IN her cosy little Georgetown cottage 
Miss Emily Mason spent the latest 
years of her long life and there I 
visited her often, finding her as strong 
and agile after having passed the octo- 
genarian line as she had been long 
years before when we knew each other 
in old Virginia. 

A portrait of her brother, Stevens 
Mason, hung upon the wall, and I noted 
its resemblance to pictures of Colonel 
George Mason of Gunston Hall, the 
great old patriot and founder of the 
family in Virginia. 

"My brother Stevens was the first 
Governor of Michigan ; he was appoint- 
ed by President Jackson acting Gov- 
ernor when twenty years old, the only 
one under legal age who was ever head 
of a territorial government. When 
Michigan became a State he was elected 

130 



EMILY VIRGINIA MASON 

Governor. I made him a long visit 
there and so for a time was a Wolver- 
ine." 

" You have been many things in your 
life, my dear Miss Emily, and still you 
always remain the same." 

"My most exciting visit to the North 
was made in the beginning of the war 
when I was called to New Jersey by 
the illness of my niece who was the wife 
of an officer on the staff of General 
Scott. The newspapers promptly her- 
alded me as a spy, paying me the high 
compliment of regarding me as bril- 
liant enough to take in the plan of a 
fortification at a glance and subtle 
enough to act as the arch-conspirator 
in complicated and daring schemes. 
They asserted that I was sent by Gen- 
eral Beauregard to arouse the Catho- 
lics and by Mr. James M. Mason to stir 
up the Democrats. The only association 
I found with humanity outside of our 
131 



EMILY VIRGINIA MASON 

own household was in attending early 
mass, whereupon I was accused of go- 
ing early to church to confer with my 
co-conspirators. Existence was lively 
there but dangerous, and any attempt 
to escape would have led to my arrest. 
Some Sisters who thought that I would 
succeed in getting away sometime 
brought letters written by wives and 
mothers to their husbands and sons in 
Richmond prisons. I dared not try to 
take them but learned them by heart 
and afterward had the good fortune to 
keep my promise to give the messages 
to the prisoners. Through the kind- 
ness of a friendly northern officer I 
went to Richmond and found myself 
in about as bad a position as I had 
held in the North, for I was taken for 
a spy sent by the Government at Wash- 
ington. On the way I found my work 
while waiting on a steamer on which 
we had taken refuge after an accident 

132 



EMILY VIRGINIA MASON 

to our own boat. A number of wounded 
men were put aboard. I spent the rest 
of the waiting time in attending the un- 
fortunates and left them in good care 
when I went on my way." 

"Oh, how well I know what you were 
to the hospital service in Richmond, my 
dear!" 

"Thank you; I did try to do what I 
could, and for all alike. It made no 
difference whether a wounded man was 
northern or southern, if he suffered 
and needed care. Our men had the same 
spirit and when we divided supplies 
with the captives in the city prisons 
would send them the white bread, say- 
ing that northern soldiers were not 
used to corn bread and could not eat 
it." 

We had never heard of the Red Cross 
in those days, but Miss Mason's hos- 
pital was managed on the same prin- 
ciples. It made no difference what 
133 



EMILY VIRGINIA MASON 

cause a man supported, the fact that he 
was suffering brought to him warm 
sympathy and swift aid. 

"I've just had such a sweet visit with 
Winnie Davis. We talked of you and 
she said beautiful things about you." 

"Yes; we are good friends. When I 
was in Paris a few years after the war 
closed Mr. Davis wrote me that Winnie 
was there in school and asked me to call 
on her. She was overjoyed to see some 
one from home who knew and loved her 
people, and asked many questions 
about the war. 'But what happened just 
after the war?' she asked. 'What did 
Papa do first 1 I was too little then to 
know anything about it and no one has 
ever told me what happened next after 
the war closed.' I saw that she had 
been intentionally kept in ignorance 
and did not tell her, but wrote to Mr. 
Davis asking him why she had not been 
told the truth. He replied that he did 

134 



EMILY VIRGINIA MASON 

not wish his daughter to know anything 
that had happened to him after the fall, 
of the Confederacy because this was 
her country and he wanted her to live 
in it and love it, and she never could 
if she knew what he had suffer ed." 

When I went to see Miss Mason on 
her ninetieth birthday I found her ly- 
ing on the sofa, explaining the unusual 
attitude by saying that she was not feel- 
ing quite so well as usual. She spoke of 
a magazine article which she had writ- 
ten some years before and said that she 
would go upstairs and get it, as her 
maid did not know where it was. I 
begged her not to make the effort, but 
she said that she was in the habit of 
walking upstairs and was not so ill as 
to be unable to go. So she went and 
soon came down, apparently on the feet 
of sixteen, which I thought doing well 
for one of her "ill days." But she al- 
ways was the youngest woman I knew, 
135 



EMILY VIRGINIA MASON 

whatever she might say of her years. 
On her ninety-first birthday she re- 
ceived her friends, giving them the wel- 
come of one in the full tide of health 
and vigor, and enjoying every moment 
of the day. A short time later she 
passed from earth. 



136 



MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR 

WHEN my Soldier was in com- 
mand of the Department of 
Virginia and North Carolina 
and our home was in Petersburg I 
knew and loved the beautiful and brill- 
iant Mrs. Pryor, so well known for 
years in old Washington. The deep in- 
terest with which I listened to her 
stories of life in the Capital incited her 
to tell me many memories of what was 
to her the brightest time she had ever 
known, furnishing a wide contrast to 
those dark days of war and privation. 
She told me that she had known the 
" Little Giant" of Illinois and my 
cousin, Mr. Beverlv Tucker of Vir- 
ginia, who were good friends. 

"It was an impressive lesson in con- 
trast to see them together, Judge Doug- 
las, the shortest man in Washington, 
and Mr. Tucker, almost a giant in 
137 



MRS. ROGER A. PRTOR 



height and with weight in proportion. 
The Judge really had the fixed idea 
that he would be President some day 
and had already considered the rewards 
which he would bestow upon his friends. 
Passing the White House with his tall 
friend, Mr. Tucker, he asked with a ma- 
jestic wave of his hand toward the home 
of Presidents, 'Bev, what do you want 
me to give you when I go there to live V 
'Not a thing, Douglath,' replied Mr. 
Tucker with his fascinating little lisp, 
'not a thing. Jutht take me on your 
knee and call me Bev. ; thath all.' " 

Mrs. Pryor laughed anew at the men- 
tal picture of that giant Virginian on 
the knee of the little Illinoisian. 

"When Patti made her debut in 'Lu- 
cia' Mr. Douglas listened for a while in 
a dazed way and then asked me, 'What 
is it all about?' I told him that it was 
Scott's 'Bride of Lammermoor' set to 
music. He brightened visibly and 

138 



MES. ROGER A. PRYOR 



asked with lively interest, ' Whose bride 
was she? Where did she live?' I told 
him I was afraid that she was only a 
fiction and that she never lived any- 
where. 'Then I don't see what she is 
for, ' he replied in a tone of disappoint- 
ment, and turned away indifferently. 
His interest lay in acquiring exact in- 
formation and if ' Lucia' was not an ex- 
istent fact of life he did not want to 
hear about her even through the me- 
dium of the most glorious voice on 
earth." 

Mrs. Pry or 's experience and the 
breadth of her observation seemed very 
wonderful to me and I said, "I wonder 
if I shall ever go to Washington and see 
great politicians and diplomats?" 

"If you do, child, it will all be differ- 
ent," she said sadly. "The old life will 
not come back and the old friends are 
gone. You cannot see Washington Irv- 
ing with his scholarly atmosphere and 
139 



MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR 



the melancholy romance that always 
circled him like the fragrance of lav- 
ender in an old casket." 

"Why are people who write funny 
things always sad?" 

" Maybe for the reason that we do not 
see the humor of life until most other 
things are lost. My friend, Mr. James, 
is gone, always insistent upon all the 
alphabet that belonged to him, to the 
confusion of butlers, who could get in- 
numerable variations from the combi- 
nation 'G. P. R. ? His solitary horse- 
man has ceased to emerge from the 
wood on successive pages till the reader 
began to have serious intentions of 
shooting him from behind a neighbor- 
ing clump of bushes. How delightful 
G. P. R. would have been if he had only 
lived, and not written books. I suppose 
the man must be better than his book or 
the book would not be worth much, but 
I used to think it was not necessary 

140 



MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR 



that the discrepancy should be so 
great.' ' 

Mrs. Pryor adorned Washington so- 
ciety at a time when our national his- 
tory was drifting into its most tragical- 
ly dramatic stage, but not yet released 
from the primitive era which regarded 
the White House as a structure of 
classic magnificence, and contemplated 
with admiration tinged with awe Old 
Hickory in Lafayette Park heroically 
bestriding his impossible steed and 
charging rampant over the artistic sen- 
sibilities of a helpless populace. The 
riotous specimens of art hung upon the 
walls of public buildings had not yet 
produced in the art-soul a glimmering 
of cubist nightmares rendered madden- 
ing by heterogeneous collections of shin- 
gles falling down undiscoverable stair- 
cases. 

It was an era of political and social 
brilliance, when eloquent men still thun* 
141 



MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR 



dered forth heroic sentiments in classic 
periods, and lovely women had the slop- 
ing shoulders and oval faces which have 
since given place to the square build 
and commercial profile of a business 
age. 

With a party of friends Mrs, Pryor 
watched the wind-blown snow falling 
upon the procession that escorted the 
youthful and handsome President 
Pierce to the White House and to his 
political death. She was a distin- 
guished social figure in the administra- 
tion of President Buchanan, which went 
its dancing, laughing, sparkling way to 
meet the earthquake. She was a noble 
woman of the Confederacy and lived 
many years after its fall to give to the 
reading world beautiful pictures of the 
lights and shadows that had fallen over 
her life. 



142 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

MISS JEWETT was the faithful 
delineator of the life and char- 
acter of old New England, as is 
Mary Wilkins Freeman of the New 
England of to-day. The daughter of 
the village doctor, the little Sarah Orne 
unconsciously absorbed the life of her 
environment as she drove with her 
father when he made his professional 
calls. 

"The best of my education was re- 
ceived in my father's buggy and the 
places to which it carried me," she said, 
"The rest was mere schooling. With 
the wicked connivance of my father I 
used to run away from school and go the 
rounds with him; if we suffered a lit- 
tle from the pangs of our New England 
conscience we enjoyed enough from the 
delightful experience to make up for it. 
143 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



In the spring days the new opening 
beauties of the countryside fascinated 
me as I sat in my father's buggy and 
waited for him to finish his visit and 
go on to the next patient. The loveli- 
ness of sky and trees and flowers and 
soft carpet of grasses filled my soul with 
happiness. What dreams used to come 
to me up that long brown road leading 
off to fairy places in some entrancing 
Nowhere. When the professional call 
was long and the visions faded away I 
would go into the yard and play with 
the children who always brought me 
something new in childish character and 
point of view. When people sometimes 
remark upon the realistic personality 
of one of my book children I go back in 
thought to some moment of childish 
play and say, 'That did not take any 
work. It is just a child I knew once, 
lifted out of those days and feloniously 
transferred to my book. I ought to be 

144 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



arrested for kidnapping, because it was 
nothing else.' " 

"If more people could kidnap to such 
good effect that crime would become the 
crowning virtue of the age/' I replied. 

"It would be a crime or a virtue 
easily achieved if the world had the ad- 
vantages that were thrust upon me 
without my seeking. A dull little coun- 
try village is just the place to find the 
real drama of life. In the roar of the 
city it is only the glaring virtues and 
the strident vices that become apparent. 
The delicate cadences are lost in the 
blare of the heavy tones." 

"You learned to hear more of the 
cadences and see more of the shades of 
character than most people do." 

"The village doctor comes nearer 
than anyone else to the true springs of 
village life, nearer even than the pastor 
of the one little church that points to 
the only way to heaven for all alike. 
145 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



The preacher, however great-hearted, 
comes with the mystifications of the 
spirit life that people like to hear about 
on Sunday mornings when they don 
their Sunday clothes and come together 
for their weekly sermon and chat in the 
churchyard after service is over. But 
the Doctor brings comfort and healing 
for the earth life, which they think they 
understand because there is no one to 
tell them there is anything to it except 
what they can see. I, being his other 
self, came next in intimacy, and the 
characters I met when the Doctor made 
his rounds became a part of my very 
life." 

""I always wondered why your people 
seemed like old friends to me." 

"They were actual discoveries. In 
one house lived 'Aunt Tempy' and 
watching the quiet way in which she 
passed on the small blessings of life, the 
kindly smile, the gentle word, the help- 

146 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



ing hand, the gift from her own small 
store to some one who had even less, I 
was unconsciously evolving the 'Aunt 
Tempy' whose passing would leave so 
wide and deep a void. In another poor 
little home was the self -abnegating mil- 
liner, longing for a wider opportunity 
to make some one else happy, and in a 
more imposing dwelling the rich lady 
of the little community, who would have 
enjoyed being liberal, had not some dead 
hand of her ancestors stretched out 
through the generations and held her 
back from the indulgence of generous 
impulses. So there were 'Aunt Tempy 
and her Watchers' ready to hand." 

"I know the glory of that kind of 
life. My first memories, even before I 
was able to ride alone, are of sitting in 
front of my father on horseback and 
riding through the countryside. And 
now work is all the more enjoyable, be- 
gun in such a beautiful way." 
147 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



"I love the thought part of it and the 
weaving part, but the business phase is 
not so agreeable. I wonder if in the 
next life our thoughts will not grow like 
the wild flowers in the woodland and 
blossom and breathe fragrance and glow 
with color and light all unconnected 
with the book market.' ' 

In this era of futurist nightmares and 
cubist spasms the clear etchings traced 
by Sarah Orne Jewett are crowded out 
of the gallery of time, but we who knew 
her as a living presence like to go back 
and revel in the silvery light of her ex- 
quisitely drawn and delicately shaded 
word pictures of the quiet scenes in 
which she found the dramatic forces of 
life cast in the comedy and tragedy of 
everyday existence. 



148 






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